The meaning of _kal_, I have already explained to be a fastening together, a package, a bundle. _Bak_, as a verb, is to tie around and around with a network of cords; _pic_ is the old word for the short petticoat worn by the women, which was occasionally used as a sac. If we remember that grains of corn or of cacao were what were generally employed as counters, then we may suppose these were measures of quantity. The word _kal_ (_qal_), in Kiche means a score and also specifically 20 grains of cacao; _bak_ in Cakchiquel means a corn-cob, and as a verb to shell an ear of corn, but I am not clear of any connection between this and the numeral. Other meanings of _bak_ in Maya are "meat" and the _partes pudendas_ of either sex. _Calab_, seems to be an instrumental form from _cal_, to stuff, to fill full.[45-1] The word _calam_ is used in the sense of excessive, overmuch. In Cakchiquel the phrase _mani hu cala_, not (merely) one _cala_, is synonymous with _mani hu chuvi_, not (merely) one bag or sack, both meaning a countless number.[46-1] In that dialect the specific meaning of _cala_ is 20 loads of cacao beans.[46-2] The term _tzotzceh_ means deerskin, but for _kinchil_ and _alau_, I have found no satisfactory derivation that does not strain the forms of the word too much. I would, however, suggest one possible connection of meaning. In _kinchil_, we have the word _kin_, day; in _alau_, the word _u_ month, and in the term for mathematical infinity, _hunhablat_, we find _hun haab_, one year, just as in the related expression, _hunhablazic_, which signifies that which lasts a whole year. If this suggestion is well grounded, then in these highest expressions of quantity (and I am inclined to think that originally _hun hablat_, one _hablat_=20 _alau_) we have applications of the three time periods, the day, the month, and the year, with the figurative sense that the increase of one over the other was as the relative lengths of these different periods. I think it worth while to go into these etymologies, as they may throw some light on the graphic representation of the numerals in the Maya hieroglyphics. It is quite likely that the figures chosen to represent the different higher units would resemble the objects which their names literally signify. The first nineteen numerals were written by a combination of dots and lines, examples of which we find in abundance in the Codex Troano and other manuscripts. The following explanation of it is from the pen of a native writer in the last century:-- [Illustration]