The curious hieroglyphics still used by gypsies are no doubt derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics, and although most of them have changed considerably, a certain resemblance in some of the forms can still be traced. Ideograms are still used in North America in out of the way places. A common mark for a cheese is a circle, and this sign was found opposite a farmer’s name, but he had never had one. He did, however, owe for a grindstone, and the draughtsman clerk had forgotten to put in the centre dot which would have marked the difference between the stone and the edible. In common use more or less all over the civilised world is the pointing hand, meaning either “Look there” or “This way.” Some signs are also ideographic in character; among these are certain of the deaf and dumb signs, and also some of the arm signals used in the navy. In the army some of the bugle calls imitate as far as possible the sounds to which they refer. For instance, the “prepare for cavalry” has some resemblance to horses galloping. Ideographs used in written languages soon change in character. No longer do they mean simply what they portray, but the sound of its name, and then by degrees they represented the first syllable, and eventually only the first letter of its name. These changes of meaning are accompanied by changes of form, and it is very curious to trace how an apparently arbitrary letter form is really only the survival of the main lines of an ancient ideogram. There are several most interesting instances of these changes given by Dr. Isaac Taylor in his classic “History of the Alphabet,” as well as by other writers on the subject, particularly Sir E. Maunde Thompson and Mr. Falconer Madan. Egyptian inscriptions show both ideographs, hieroglyphics and alphabetic signs, as there is usually a word spelt out in syllables or letters, and at the end of it the complete word shown as a little picture. The hieroglyphics altered into a style of writing which was not so pictorial about the nineteenth century B.C., and although alphabetical symbols were actually used as early as 4,000 B.C., yet it was very many years later than this that they became of general use. The earliest piece of hieroglyphic known is cut upon stone on a tablet now preserved in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. It is supposed to have been made about 4,000 B.C., and on it the name of King Send is written alphabetically. Our present alphabetic writing is by no means final, as it is even now undergoing a remarkable change, in which neither ideograph, hieroglyphic, nor alphabet plays any part. Shorthand will in time supersede our comparatively cumbrous process, and it is purely phonetic. Chinese writing is still in the syllabic state, but the Japanese, which is formed from it, has advanced many steps towards the alphabetical stage.