of inscriptions.’ It was, however, upon the principle these writers suggested that Hincks was now about to solve one of the greatest difficulties of the language. The solution is contained in an Appendix to the essay just reviewed, and was sent to press on January 19, 1850, the same day that Major Rawlinson read his first paper to the Asiatic Society. Hincks now explains that there are four distinct vowel sounds in Assyrian, _ā_, _a_, _i_ and _u_; but the difference between the first two was not maintained when they preceded a consonant.[814] He laid down that every sign represented a consonant either preceded or followed by one of these vowels. Therefore, each consonant was represented by seven signs, thus: _cā_, _ca_, _ci_, _cu_; _ac_, _ic_, _uc_. He thought there were at least fifteen consonants, and that the syllabary was of Indo-European origin, and need not therefore, as he had at first supposed, be adjusted to the Hebrew alphabet. The principle thus announced has been accepted with some modifications. The difference between the long and short _a_ has not been maintained in this connection, and consequently the syllabic representation of each consonant is reduced from seven to six. His statement that the difference between surd and sonant is maintained at the beginning but not at the end of the syllable has also been admitted. We have thus separate signs for _ba_, _bi_, _bu_ and _pa_, _pi_, _pu_; but the signs for _ap_, _ip_ and _up_ answer for both. Hincks’s consonants have been accepted without material change. His _y_ has been omitted and _h_ added; _z_ has been substituted for _j_. Two signs for _k_ to represent _Caph_ and _Koph_, and two for _t_ to represent _Teth_ and _Tau_ have been added, where Hincks only had one for each, so that the number of consonants is now raised to seventeen. Not only did Hincks arrive at a correct theory of the simple syllables, but he identified correctly a very large number of the signs corresponding to them. Of the seventy-one he gives in his Table at least fifty-seven are accurate, and possibly even more. He closed the essay with a brief specimen of a translation from the Khorsabad inscription.