The long, elephantine, Tlaloc nose, so often repeated in the Mexican codices, is even more common and more elaborate in the Maya manuscripts and sculptures, and, as we learn from a MS. paper by Mr. Gustav Eisen, lately received by the Smithsonian Institution, has also been found at Copan. Many more points or items of agreement might be pointed out, but these will suffice to show that one must have borrowed from the other, for it is impossible that isolated civilizations should have produced such identical results in details even down to conventional figures. Again we ask the question, Which was the borrower? We hesitate to accept what seems to be the legitimate conclusion to be drawn from these facts, as it compels us to take issue with the view almost universally held. One thing is apparent, viz, that the Mexican symbols could never have grown out of the Maya hieroglyphics. That the latter might have grown out of the former is not impossible. If we accept the theory that there was a Toltec nation preceding the advent of the Aztec, which, when broken up and driven out of Mexico, proceeded southward, where probably colonies from the main stock had already been planted, we may be able to solve the enigma. If this people were, as is generally supposed, the leaders in Mexican and Central American civilization, it is possible that the Aztecs, a more savage and barbarous people, borrowed their civilization from the former, and, having less tendency toward development, retained the original symbols and figures of the former, adding only ornamentation and details, but not advancing to any great extent toward a written language. Some such supposition as this, I believe, is absolutely necessary to explain the facts mentioned. But even this will compel us to admit that the monuments of Yucatan and Copan are of much more recent date than has generally been supposed, and such I am inclined to believe is the fact. At any rate, I think I may fairly claim, without rendering myself chargeable with egotism, that my discovery in regard to the two plates so frequently mentioned will throw some additional light on this vexed question. NOTE.--Since the foregoing was printed, my attention has been called by Dr. Brinton to the fact that the passage quoted from Sahagun (see pages 41 and 54), as given in Bustamente's edition, from which it was taken, is incorrect in combining _Cetochtli_ and _Acatl_ into one word, when in fact the first is the end of one sentence and the second the commencement of another. I find, by reference to the passage as given in Kingsborough, the evidence of this erroneous reading. The argument on page 54, so far as based upon this incorrect reading, must fall. FOOTNOTES: [14] Study Manuscript Troano, pp. 69-74. [15] Les. Doc. Ecrit. l'Antiq. Ameriq. [16] Zeits. fuer Ethn., 1879. [17] Study Manuscript Troano, pp. 68-70. [18] Vol. III, p. 471. [19] P. 234. [20] P. 209. [21] P. 82.