It is in no degree surprising to find that nearly the same symbols are in use by widely different tribes; for, alike in their pictographs and gestures, they naturally aim at the most familiar and literal representations. The Eskimo and Alaskans represent death, in their drawings and bone carvings, by the symbol of a headless body, in nearly the same way as the Iroquois, the Algonkins, and the Blackfeet. To this is added the spear, the bow and arrow, or the gun, to indicate the mode of death by violence. The ordinary symbol of sepulchral memorial is the reversing of the totem and other objects pictured on the grave-post. A succession of lines in rows or columns is the simplest mode of primitive numeration, perpetuated among the Egyptians even so late as the Ptolemaic dynasty. It appears to have been in use among the cave-men of the Vézère in palæolithic times, and is common to all such records. But in the Eskimo and Indian pictographs the elevated hand, with one or more fingers extended, serves for numeration; and where the extended fingers and thumbs of both hands are represented on an exaggerated scale, it signifies _multitude_. The native gestures, drawings, and spoken languages, have indeed to be studied together to understand fully the processes resorted to for the expression and interchange of ideas. To the philologist, the efforts at supplying equivalent terms for objects and ideas common to the many diverse races furnish a study full of interest. A Chinook or Clatsop word modified to _saghalie_, signifying “above,” or “high,” is compounded with the Nootka _tyee_, as the name of the High Chief, or God. _Elip_, a Chihalis word, signifies “first,” or “before”; _tilikum_, Chinook, is “people, a tribe,” or “band”; but the two words conjoined, _elip-tilikum_, lit. “the first people,” is employed in reference to a race of beings who preceded the Indians as inhabitants of the world, just as we speak of the Antediluvians. _Ipsoot_ is the Chinook word for “to hide,” _ipsoot wau-wau_ is “to hide one’s speech,” _i.e._ “to whisper.” Or, again, _opitsah_ is a modification of the Chinook for “a knife”; _opitsah-yakka-sikha_, literally, “the knife’s friend,” is “a fork.” The same word is also applied to a sweetheart. Such economic use of words is indeed by no means rare. But this branch of the subject lies apart from the aim of the present paper. It may be noted, however, in passing, that many of the jargon words, according to Mr. Gibbs, “have been adopted into ordinary conversation in Oregon, and threaten to become permanently incorporated as a local addition to the English.” Mr. Horatio Hale, long ago, stated as a result of his own observations, at an earlier date: “There are Canadians and half-breeds married to Chinook women, who can only converse with their wives in this speech; and it is the fact, strange as it may seem, that many young children are growing up to whom this factitious language is really the mother-tongue, and who speak it