It is a curious and undeniable fact that the Maya name for table is mayac, and that the dictionaries contain the words mayac-tun, stone-table, and mayac-ché, wooden, literally, tree-table. Familiarity with the native modes of rebus-writing leads to the inference that this picture of a tree and table, expressing the sounds mayac-ché, actually signified the tree of the Mayas and therefore figured in the book relating their history. Bishop Landa records that the Mayas believed in a beautiful celestial tree, resembling the ceiba and named yax-ché, literally, green tree, under whose shade they would repose in after-life. Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg surmises that this tree was the same as the beautiful shade tree which grows in Yucatan and Mexico and is named, in the latter country, tonacaz-quahuital=tree of our subsistence, _i. e._, life. A Maya name for the “tree of life,” ua-hom-ché, next claims our attention.(48) A valuable old manuscript dictionary of the Maya language, quoted by Dr. Brinton, records that the word uah means “a certain kind of life.” The word _hom_ is an ancient term for an artificial elevation, mound or pyramid, hence _homul_, the pyramid on which a temple was built. Combined with ché, tree, the word seems to signify “the elevated or high tree of life,” the idea of the celestial tree “on high,” being possibly intended. In connection with this it is interesting to reëxamine fig. 20, IV, which represents a flat pyramid from which grows a four-petalled flower on a stalk with two leaves, the symbolism of which is apparent. I am inclined to connect another native name translated in the dictionaries by “cross”=zin-ché with zihil=to be born, to commence, zihnal=original, primitive, and zian=origin, generation, ancestry, and to interpret it “the tree of ancestral or tribal life.” On the other hand, there is the adjective zinil=mighty, great, and the meaning of zin-ché may merely mean “the mighty tree.” In treating of the “cross tablet” of Palenque in the following pages, reference will be made to Dr. Brinton’s identification of the “cross” as a tree and tree symbolism referred to again. Although unable to produce here all the data I have collected on the subject, I think that the foregoing prove that the Peruvians, Mexicans and Mayas, employed the four-branched tree as an image of the organization and growth of their communal life, and utilized it in pictography as a means of recording changes of organization and statistics of increase or decrease of population. The Maya word for “one generation of men,” uinay, literally meaning “one growth,” seems to reveal that each generation was popularly thought of as one growth of leaves on the tree of state—a simile which is worthy of note. One more point remains to be considered in reference to the organization of the population into four parts, each of which consisted of four minor parts and so on; namely, the employment of color as a means of differentiation.