A few persons in Yucatan have appreciated the desirability of collecting and preserving these works. Don Pio Perez was the first to do so, and of living Yucatecan scholars particular mention should be made of the Rev. Canon Don Crescencio Carrillo y An cona,[TN-3] who has written a good, and I believe the only, description of them which has yet appeared in print.[19-*] They attracted the earnest attention of that eminent naturalist and ethnologist, the late Dr. C. Hermann Berendt, and at a great expenditure of time and labor he visited various parts of Yucatan, and with remarkable skill made _fac-simile_ copies of the most important and complete specimens which he could anywhere find. This invaluable and unique collection has come into my hands since his death, and it is this which has prompted me to make known their character and contents to those interested in such subjects. FOOTNOTES: [5-*] Read before the Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia, at its twenty-fourth annual meeting, January 5th, 1882. [5-+] Of the numerous authorities which could be quoted on this point, I shall give the words of but one, Father Alonso Ponce, the Pope's Commissary-General, who travelled through Yucatan in 1586, when many natives were still living who had been born before the Conquest (1541). Father Ponce had travelled through Mexico, and, of course, had learned about the Aztec picture-writing, which he distinctly contrasts with the writing of the Mayas. Of the latter, he says: "_Son alabados de tres cosas entre todos los demas de la Nueva Espana, la una de que en su antiguedad tenian caracteres y letras, con que escribian sus historias y las ceremonias y orden de los sacrificios de sus idolos y su calendario, en libros hechos de corteza de cierto arbol, los cuales eran unas tiras muy largas de quarta o tercia en ancho, que se doblaban y recogian, y venia a queder a manera de un libro encuardenada en cuartilla, poco mas o menos. Estas letras y caracteres no las entendian, sino los sacerdotes de los idolos, (que en aquella lengua se llaman 'ahkines,') y algun indio principal. Despues las entendieron y supieron leer algunos frailos nuestros y aun las escribien._"--("_Relacion Breve y Verdadera de Algunas Cosas de las Muchas que Sucedieron al Padre Fray Alonso Ponce, Comisario-General en las Provincias de la Nueva Espana_," page 392). I know no other author who makes the interesting statement that these characters were actually used by the missionaries to impart instruction to the natives; but I learn through Mr. Gatschet, of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, that a manuscript written in this manner by one of the early _padres_ has recently been discovered. [5-++] "_Se les quemamos todos_," he writes, "_lo qual a maravilla sentian y les dava pena._"--"_Relacion de las Cosas de Yucatan_," page 316. [7-*] "_Relacion de las Cosas de Yucatan_," page 160.