In Symbolic Writing, a single characteristic part or trait serves to represent the whole object; thus the track of an animal will stand for the animal itself.... It will be observed that Thought Writing has no reference to spoken language; neither the picture of a wolf nor the representation of his footprint conveys the slightest notion of the sound of the word _wolf_. How was the enormous leap made from the thought to the sound—in other words, from an ideographic to a phonetic method of writing? This question has received considerable attention from scholars with reference to the development of the two most important alphabets in the world, the Egyptian and the Chinese. Both these began as simple picture writing, and both progressed to almost complete phoneticism. In both cases, however, the earliest steps are lost, and can be retraced only by indications remaining after a high degree of phonetic power had been reached. On the other hand, in the Mexican and probably in the Maya hieroglyphics, we find a method of writing which is intermediate between the two great classes I have mentioned, and which illustrates in a striking manner the phases through which both the Egyptian and the Semitic alphabets passed somewhat before the dawn of history. To this method, which stands midway between the ikonographic and the alphabetic methods of writing, I have given the name _ikonomatic_, derived from the Greek εικων-ονος, an image, a figure; ονομα-ατος, a name.... It is this plan on which those familiar puzzles are constructed which are called rebuses and none other than this which served to bridge over the wide gap between Thought and Sound Writing. It is, however, not correct to say that it is a writing by _things_, rebus; but it is by the _names_ of things, and hence I have coined the work ikonomatic to express this clearly.” The position of the signs often had important significance, just as it has in some of our puzzles, like the following: WOOD JOHN MASS