Hincks’s paper ‘On the First and Second Kinds of Persepolitan Writing’ was read to the Royal Irish Academy on June 9, 1846, and he communicated its contents to Mr. Norris, the secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society, who sent a detailed account of it to Major Rawlinson at Bagdad. This letter was despatched from London on August 20, and five days afterwards, on the twenty-fifth of the same month,[549] Major Rawlinson sent off a Supplementary Note in which, by a very singular coincidence, he introduced some important modifications in his system of transliteration that brought it into substantial agreement with that just then proposed by Hincks. Thus the two documents crossed each other on the way, a circumstance that affords conclusive proof of their independent production.[550] But as Hincks’s paper was read in June and Rawlinson’s note not despatched till August, the priority must be awarded to the former. This was the first occasion on which Hincks had contributed to cuneiform research, and, as we have said, he had the good fortune to forestall Rawlinson in one of his most useful discoveries. When he wrote, Lassen’s Second Memoir of 1844 was still the chief authority on the subject, and it is to it that he directs his criticism. In looking over Lassen’s alphabet, nothing was more remarkable than the number of signs allotted to certain supposed modifications of the same sound. Thus _k_, for example, was represented by no less than four different signs expressing _k_ (No. 4), _k’_ (16), _k’h_ (19), and _kh_ (42): _d_ by three different signs, _d_ (11), _d’h_ (22), and _dh_ (34). At the same time it was beginning to be remarked that certain of these signs to which modifications of the same sound were ascribed were only to be found in combination with particular vowels. Lassen himself had pointed out in his First Memoir of 1836 that _m_ (29) always preceded an _i_. Jacquet added that _r_ (40) always occurred before _u_. Holtzmann also remarked that 28 (𐎩), to which he gave the value of _g_, is always followed by _a_, and 19 _d_ by _i_.[551]