the ruler, would suffice to convey the certainty that the count of the four year-signs was understood to be present. On Stelæ F and M, each of which displays twenty glyphs and one sculptured personage, the latter is particularly characterized by being associated with head-dresses and emblems consisting of elaborate conventionalized plumed serpents’ heads. The inference naturally is that the serpent symbolism, which recurs in some form or other on every stela effigy, expresses or conveys that the rank and title of the personage were that of a Kukul-can, the high-priest ruler who impersonated the “Divine Four,” or of some lord=Ahau, who was also “ruler of the four regions.” It must be recognized that a stone stela, on which is sculptured the image of a lord and a count of 20, answers exactly to the memorial stone named Ahau-ka-tun, literally, lord, 20 stone, and it is easy to see how the period or era of twenty-four years should come to be called by the name of the stone which commemorated it, and each era to be differentiated by being designated by the personal name of the ruler who held office during its course. The result would be practically the same as the allusion to a particular reign in a nation’s history, with the seeming difference that all ancient American rulers and their subordinates held fixed terms of office, coinciding with the various periods of the calendar. The inscriptions on the foregoing stelæ are made of glyphs of a uniform character. Other stelæ at Copan display the interesting set of 6+1=7 signs which recur on so many Central American monuments and strikingly coincide in number with the all-pervading division into six parts plus the middle and synopsis of all. Of this “septenary set of signs,” six are uniform in size and character whilst the first is more elaborate and important in every respect and, as I shall set forth by a series of illustrations in another publication, actually does symbolize the union of the Above and Below. It is to Mr. Maudslay that we owe the recognition of the existence of this septenary set of glyphs, which he announced as follows to the Royal Geographical Society in 1886: “A number of Central American inscriptions are headed by what I shall call an initial scroll (the style of which is permanent throughout many variations) and begin with the same formula, usually extending through six squares of hieroglyphic writing, the sixth square, or sometimes the latter half of the sixth square, being a human face, usually in profile, enclosed in a frame or cartouche” (Proceedings, p. 583).