At first sight there is only the most general resemblance between the personages represented in the two plates; as STEPHENS says in his original account of them, they are "in many respects similar." If he had known them to be the same, he would not have wasted his time in drawing them. The scale of the two drawings and of the two statues is different; but the two personages are the same identically. Figure for figure, ornament for ornament, they correspond. It is unnecessary to give the minute comparison here in words. It can be made by any one from the two plates herewith. Take any part of Plate I, find the corresponding part of Plate IV, and whether it is human feature or sculptured ornament the two will be found to be the same. Take the middle face depending from the belt in each plate. The earrings are the same; the ornament below the chin, the knot above the head, the complicated beadwork on each side of this face, all are the same. The bracelets of the right arms of the main figures have each the forked serpent tongue, and the left-arm bracelets are ornamented alike. The crosses with beads almost inclosed in the right hands are alike; the elliptic ornaments above each wrist, the knots and _chiffres_ over the serpent masks which surmount the faces, all are the same. In the steel plates given by STEPHENS there are even more coindences[TN-4] to be seen than in the excellent wood-cuts here given, which have been copied from them. Here, then, is an important fact. The theory that the _chiffre_ over the forehead is characteristic, though it is not definitively proved, receives strong confirmation. The parts which have been lost by the effects of time on one statue can be supplied from the other. Better than all, we gain a test of the minuteness with which the sculptors worked, and an idea of how close the adherence to a type was required to be. Granting once that the two personages are the same (a fact about which I conceive there can be no possible doubt, since the chances in favor are literally thousands to one), we learn what license was allowed, and what synonyms in stone might be employed. Thus, the ornament suspended from the neck in Plate IV is clearly a tiger's skull. That from the neck of Plate I has been shown to be the derived form of a skull by Dr. HARRISON ALLEN,[225-*] and we now know that this common form relates not to the human skull, as Dr. ALLEN has supposed, but to that of the tiger. We shall find this figure often repeated, and the identification is of importance. This is a case in regard to synonyms. The kind of symbolism so ably treated by Dr. ALLEN is well exemplified in the conventional sign for the _crotalus_ jaw at the mouth of the mask over the head of each figure. This is again found on the body of the snake in Plate LX, and in other places. Other important questions can be settled by comparison of the two plates. For example, at Palenque we often find a sign composed of a half ellipse, inside of which bars are