As far as I am aware, the use of this kind of writing [rebus] was confined, among the Aztecs, to the names of persons and places, while the Mayas, if they used the rebus form at all, used it also for expressing common nouns and possibly abstract ideas. The Mayas surely used picture writing and the ideographic system, but I feel confident that a large part of their hieroglyphs will be found to be made up of rebus forms and that the true line of research will be found to lie in this direction. [Illustration: FIG. 15. Aztec place names: _a_, The sign for the town Toltitlan; _b_, the sign for the town Acatzinco.] Doctor Brinton (1894 b: p. 13) held an opinion between these two, perhaps inclining slightly toward the former: "The intermediate position which I have defended, is that while chiefly ideographic, they [the Maya glyphs] are occasionally phonetic, in the same manner as are confessedly the Aztec picture-writings." These quotations from the most eminent authorities on the subject well illustrate their points of agreement and divergence. All admit the existence of phonetic elements in the glyphs, but disagree as to their extent. And here, indeed, is the crux of the whole phonetic question. Just how extensively do phonetic elements enter into the composition of the Maya glyphs? Without attempting to dispose of this point definitely one way or the other, the author may say that he believes that as the decipherment of Maya writing progresses, more and more phonetic elements will be identified, though the idea conveyed by a glyph will always be found to overshadow its phonetic value. The various theories above described have not been presented for the reader's extended consideration, but only in order to acquaint him with the probable nature of the Maya glyphs. Success in deciphering, as we shall see, has not come through any of the above mentioned lines of research, which will not be pursued further in this work. {31}