alphabetic writing. There is, however,
propriety, if not necessity, for the present writer, when making
any remarks under this heading and under some others in this paper
indicating special lines of research, to disclaim all pretension
to being a Sinologue or Egyptologist, or even profoundly versed in
Mexican antiquities. His partial and recently commenced studies only
enable him to present suggestions for the examination of scholars.
These suggestions may safely be introduced by the statement that the
common modern alphabetic characters, coming directly from the Romans,
were obtained by them from the Greeks, and by the latter from the
Phoenicians, whose alphabet was connected with that of the old Hebrew.
It has also been of late the general opinion that the whole family of
alphabets to which the Greek, Latin, Gothic, Runic, and others belong,
appearing earlier in the Phoenician, Moabite, and Hebrew, had its
beginning in the ideographic pictures of the Egyptians, afterwards
used by them to express sounds. That the Chinese, though in a
different manner from the Egyptians, passed from picture writing to
phonetic writing, is established by delineations still extant among
them, called _ku-w[)a]n_, or "ancient pictures," with which some of
the modern written characters can be identified. The ancient Mexicans
also, to some extent, developed phonetic expressions out of a very
elaborate system of ideographic picture writing. Assuming that
ideographic pictures made by ancient peoples would be likely to
contain representations of gesture signs, which subject is treated of
below, it is proper to examine if traces of such gesture signs may not
be found in the Egyptian, Chinese, and Aztec characters. Only a few
presumptive examples, selected from a considerable number, are now
presented in which the signs of the North American Indians appear to
be included, with the hope that further investigation by collaborators
will establish many more instances not confined to Indian signs.

A typical sign made by the Indians for _no_, _negation_, is as
follows: The hand extended or slightly curved is held in front of the
body, a little to the right of the median line; it is then carried
with a rapid sweep a foot or more farther to the right. (_Mandan and
Hidatsa_ I.)

One for _none_, _nothing_, sometimes used for simple negation, is also
given: Throw both hands outward toward their respective sides from the
breast. (_Wyandot_ I.)

With thes