litan"
language of the diocess. In (53) I gave a translation of an unpublished
grammar of it, the MS. being one in the archives of the American
Philosophical Society. In some respects it is superior to the grammar of
Flores.

The higher culture of the tribes of Central America and Mexico gives a
special interest to the study of their languages, oral and written; for
with some of them we find moderately well-developed methods of recording
ideas.

Much of this culture was intimately connected with their astrological
methods and these with their calendar. This remarkable artificial
computation of time, based on the relations of the numerals 13 and 20
applied to various periods, was practically the same among the Mayas,
Nahuas, Zapotecs, Mixtecs, Chapanecs, Otomis and Tarascos--seven
different linguistic stocks--and unknown elsewhere on the globe. The
study of it (30) is exclusively from its linguistic and symbolic side.

It is strange that nowhere in North America was any measure of weight
known to the natives. Their lineal measures were drawn chiefly from the
proportions of the human body. They are investigated in (31).

Under the names _Chontalli_ and _Popoluca_, both Nahuatl words
indicating "foreigners," ethnographers have included tribes of wholly
diverse lineage. In (32) I have shown that some are Tzentals, others
Tequistlatecas, Ulvas, Mixes, Zapotecs, Nahuas, Lencas and Cakchiquels,
thus doing away with the confusion introduced by these inappropriate
ethnic terms.

No. (33) is an article for the use of students of the Nahuatl language,
mentioning the principal grammars, dictionaries and text-books which are
available.

The numbers (34), (35), (36), (37), (38), (39), (40) and (41), are
devoted to the methods of writing invented by the cultured natives of
Mexico and Central America in order to preserve their literature, such
as it was. The methods are various, that of the Nahuas not being
identical with that of the Mayas. The former is largely phonetic, but in
a peculiar manner, for which I have proposed the term of "ikonomatic,"
the principle being that of the rebus. That this method can be
successfully applied to the decipherment of inscriptions I demonstrated
in the translation of one which is quite celebrated, the "Stone of the
Giants" at Orizaba, Mexico (41). The translation I proposed has been
fully accepted.[16-1]

The "Primer of Mayan Hieroglyphics" (39) was intended as a summary of
what had been ac