drawn. [Illustration] I shall elsewhere show that there is reason to believe the ellipse is to represent the concave of the sky, its diameter to be the level earth, and in some cases at least the bars to be the descending and fertilizing rain. The bars are sometimes two, three, and sometimes four in number. Are these variants of a single sign, or are they synonyms? Before the discovery of the identity of the personages in these two plates, this question could not be answered. Now we can say that they are not synonyms, or at least that they must be considered separately. To show this, examine the bands just above the wristlets of the two figures. Over the left hands of the figures the bars are two in number; over the right hands there are four. This exact similarity is not accidental; there is a meaning in it, and we must search for its explanation elsewhere, but we now have a valuable test of what needs to be regarded, and of what, on the other hand, may be passed over as accidental or unimportant. One other case needs mentioning here, as it will be of future use. From the waist of each figure depend nine oval solids, six being hatched over like pine cones and the three central ones having two ovals, one within the other, engraved on them. In Plate IV the inner ovals are all on the right-hand side of the outer ovals. Would they mean the same if they were on the left-hand side? Plate I enables us to say that they would, since one of these inner ovals has been put by the artist on that side by accident or by an allowed caprice. It is by furnishing us with tests and criteria like these that the proof of the identity of these two plates is immediately important. In other ways, too, the proof is valuable and interesting, but we need not discuss them at this time. These statues, then, are to us a dictionary of synonyms in stone--a test of the degree of adherence to a prototype which was exacted, and a criterion of the kind of minor differences which must be noticed in any rigid study. I have not insisted more on the resemblances, since the accompanying figures present a demonstration. Let those who wish to verify these resemblances compare minutely the ornaments above the knees of the two figures, those about the waists, above the heads, and the square knots, etc., etc. VII. ARE THE HIEROGLYPHS OF COPAN AND PALENQUE IDENTICAL? One of the first questions to be settled is whether the same system of writing was employed at Palenque and at Copan. Before any study of the meanings of the separate _chiffres_ can be made, we must have our material properly assorted, and must not include in the figures we are examining for the detection of a clue, any which may belong to a system possibly very different. The opinion of STEPHENS and of later writers is confirmed by my comparison of the Palenque and the Copan series; that is, it becomes evident that the latter series is far the older.