From these valuable though too scanty hints we learn that the letters were employed connected together in a manner somewhat analogous to, though more intimately than our cursive shrift, and also separately, as in the Roman alphabet. When the latter was the case, they were repeated apparently in their connected form. Further, the vowel sound which is necessarily associated with the enunciation of every consonant (_la aspiracion_), and which in the Maya language of Yucatan is so pronounced as to have been called by the Abbé de Bourbourg, "_une certaine affectation gutturale_," was taken account of, and expressed in writing. Then there were a number of arbitrary signs, figures, and symbols, with syllabic values, as we see in the last example given. These peculiarities, of course, make the system clumsy, but are by no means insurmountable difficulties in the way of elucidating it. Immediately at the close of the foregoing extract Bishop Landa gives the alphabet subjoined, which has been carefully copied on wood, by Mr. Edward Bensell, of Philadelphia, the arrangement of the letters being slightly altered:-- [Illustration: 1 _a_] [Illustration: 2 _a_] [Illustration: 3 _a_] [Illustration: 4 _a_] [Illustration: 5 _b_] [Illustration: 6 _b_] [Illustration: 7 _c_] [Illustration: 8 _ca_] [Illustration: 9] [Illustration: 10 _t_] [Illustration: 11 _è_] [Illustration: 12 _h_] [Illustration: 13 _h_] [Illustration: 14 _ha_] [Illustration: 15 _i_] [Illustration: 16 _k_] [Illustration: 17 _ku_] [Illustration: 18 _l_] [Illustration: 19 _l_] [Illustration: 20 _m_] [Illustration: 21 _n_] [Illustration: 22 _o_] [Illustration: 23 _o_] [Illustration: 24 _p_] [Illustration: 25 _pp_] [Illustration: 26 _x_] [Illustration: 27 _x_] [Illustration: 28 _u_] [Illustration: 29 _u_] [Illustration: 30 _z_] Besides these elementary sounds, he gives twenty arbitrary signs, one for each day of the Maya month, which signs seem also to be used at their syllabic value in writing words. All of them have the same peculiar rounded or circular form which is observable in most of the letters, and which has induced some writers to call this the "Calculiform" alphabet. But returning to the A, B, C, let us inquire the meanings of the figures adopted. Knowing these, we shall be in better position to recognise their variations on existing inscriptions and manuscripts--for these, as we expect, are considerable; but not more so, perhaps, than the variations in the forms of the Roman letters. _a._ Nos. 1, 2, and 4, are representations of the heads of some animals, No. 2 being evidently the head of a bird with a long curved beak, probably a species of parrot. No. 3 has been supposed to represent a leg or a boot of some kind, but is probably also a rude figure of a head, (See Plate XXXVI. of the _manuscrit[TN-1] Troano_.)