My programme at beginning was, _first_, to see if the inscriptions at Copan and Palenque were written in the same tongue. When I say "to see," I mean to definitely prove the fact, and so in other cases; _second_, to see how the tablets were to be read. That is, in horizontal lines, are they to be read from right to left, or the reverse? In vertical columns, are they to be read up or down? _Third_, to see whether they were phonetic characters, or merely ideographic, or a mixture of the two--rebus-like, in fact. If the characters turned out to be purely phonetic, I had determined to stop at this point, since I had not the time to learn the Maya language, and again because I utterly and totally distrusted the methods which, up to this time, have been applied by BRASSEUR DE BOURBOURG and others who start, and must start, from the misleading and unlucky alphabet handed down by LANDA. I believe that legacy to have been a positive misfortune, and I believe any process of the kind attempted by BRASSEUR DE BOURBOURG (for example, in his essay on the _MS. Troano_) to be extremely dangerous and difficult in application, and to require a degree of scientific caution almost unique. Dr. HARRISON ALLEN, in his paper, "The Life Form in Art," in the _Transactions of the American Philosophical Society_, is the only investigator who has applied this method to Central American remains with success, so it seems to me; and even here errors have occurred. The process I allude to is something like the following: A set of characters, say the alphabet of LANDA, is taken as a starting point. The _variants_ of these are formed. Then the basis of the investigation is ready. From this, the interpretation follows by identifications of each new character with one of the standard set or with one of its _variants_. Theoretically, there is no objection to this procedure. Practically, also, there is no objection if the work is done strictly in the order named. In fact, however, the list of _variants_ is filled out not before the work is begun, but during its progress, and in such a way as to satisfy the necessities of the interpreter in carrying out some preconceived idea. With a sufficient latitude in the choice of _variants_ any MS. can receive any interpretation. For example, the _MS. Troano_, which a casual examination leads me to think is a _ritual_, and an account of the adventures of several Maya gods, is interpreted by BRASSEUR DE BOURBOURG as a record of mighty geologic changes. It is next to impossible to avoid errors of this nature at least, and in fact they have not been avoided, so far as I know, except by Dr. ALLEN in the paper cited. I, personally, have chosen the stones and not the manuscripts for study largely because _variants_ do not exist in the same liberal degree in the stone inscriptions as they have been supposed to exist in the manuscripts.