rk would have been
still more difficult and the result less intelligible. The facilities
enjoyed of presenting pictorial illustrations have been of great value
and will give still more assistance in the complete work than in the
present paper.

In connection with the subject of illustrations it may be noted that
a writer in the _Journal of the Military Service Institution of the
United States_, Vol. II, No. 5, the same who had before invented the
mode of describing signs by "means" mentioned on page 330 _supra_,
gives a curious distinction between deaf-mute and Indian signs
regarding their respective capability of illustration, as follows:
"This French system is taught, I believe, in most of the schools for
deaf-mutes in this country, and in Europe; but so great has been the
difficulty of fixing the hands in space, either by written description
or illustrated cuts, that no text books are used. I must therefore
conclude that the Indian sign language is not only the more natural,
but the more simple, as the gestures can be described quite accurately
in writing, and I think can be illustrated." The readers of this
paper will also, probably, "think" that the signs of Indians can be
illustrated, and as the signs of deaf-mutes are often identical with
the Indian, whether expressing the same or different ideas, and when
not precisely identical are always made on the same principle and with
the same members, it is not easy to imagine any greater difficulty
either in their graphic illustration or in their written description.
The assertion is as incorrect as if it were paraphrased to declare
that a portrait of an Indian in a certain attitude could be taken by
a pencil or with the camera while by some occult influence the same
artistic skill would be paralysed in attempting that of a deaf-mute
in the same attitude. In fact, text books on the "French system" are
used and one in the writer's possession published in Paris twenty-five
years ago, contains over four hundred illustrated cuts of deaf-mute
gesture signs.

The proper arrangement and classification of signs will always be
troublesome and unsatisfactory. There can be no accurate translation
either of sentences or of words from signs into written English. So
far from the signs representing words as logographs, they do not in
their presentation of the ideas of actions, objects, and events, under
physical forms, even suggest words, which must be skillfully fitted
to them by