[165] Aubin, Revue orientale et Americaine, vol. iii., p. 255.
[166] The two hundred and fourteen “keys” or hieroglyphics comparable with the hieratic characters of Egypt—that is to say, ideograms representing categories of objects or symbolising general ideas—joined to a thousand phonetic signs, suffice by their combinations to convey a definite sense to the series of homophonous hieroglyphics forming the forty-four thousand characters of Chinese handwriting. Thus the word or syllable pa signifies banana, war-chariot, scar, cry, etc. To distinguish the various acceptations of the word, there must be joined to the phonetic sign pa (derived from a word the proper sense of which has long been obliterated) the key of plants, or that of iron, of diseases, of the mouth, according to the sense which it is desired to give to it. The monosyllabic structure of Chinese lends itself admirably to this hieroglyphic writing.
[167] The discovery by A. J. Evans of a special syllabic writing in the island of Crete leads one to conjecture, on the contrary, that it was from this unfortunate island that the first alphabet set out. This writing, more ancient than the Phœnician characters, is a direct derivative of pictography; it is found again at Cyprus and in Asia Minor at the epoch of the Ægean civilisation.—A. J. Evans, Rep. Brit. Ass., 1896, p. 914.
[168] C. Vogt, “L’Écriture, etc.,” Rev. Scient., 2nd half-year, p. 1221., Paris, 1880.
[169] Bunge, Lehrbuch physiol. Chemie, 2nd ed., p. 110, Leipzig, 1896.
[170] Goebel, Bull. Ac. Sc. St. Petersb., vol. v. (1861), p. 397, and Schmidt, ibid., vol. xvi. (1871), p. 203.
[171] Wilken, Vergelijk. Volkenk. v. Ned Ind., p. 89, Leyden, 1893; Science et Nature, Paris, 1885, 1st half-year, p. 393.
[172] T. Gautier, “Sur une certaine argile blanche, etc.,” Actes de la Soc. Scient. du Chili, vol. v. (1895), pt. 1 to 3, Santiago, 1895.
[173] Hellwald, Ethnogr. Rosselsprünge, p. 168, Leipzig, 1891.
[174] Thus, merely from a phrase heard from the lips of a Fuegian boy by Byron, and reproduced in the Voyage of the Beagle by Darwin, the Fuegians have until the present time been accused of cannibalism, and yet no observer living months and years among these savages has been able to verify the existence of this custom, in spite of all efforts to discover it.