I hoped to find that the name CUKULCAN, or 2021, was associated in these pairs with some adjective or verb, and therefore examined the other members of the pair.
In a case like this the card-catalogue is of great assistance; for example, I wish to examine here the _chiffres_ Nos. 2020, 2044, 2072, 3072, 3084, etc. In the catalogue their cards occur in the same compartment, arranged so that two cards that are exactly alike are contiguous. We can often know that two _chiffres_ are alike when one is in a far better state of preservation than the other. Hence we may select for study that one in which the lines and figures are best preserved; or from several characters known to be alike, and of which no one is entirely perfect, we may construct with accuracy the type upon which they were founded. In this case the hieroglyph 2020 is well preserved (see the right-hand side of Plate LVI, Fig. 48, the upper left-hand glyph). It consists of a _human hand_, with the symbol of the _sun_ in it; above this is a sign similar to that of the Maya day _Ymix_; above this again, in miniature, is the rebus "snake plumage" or _Cukulcan_; and to the left of the hieroglyph are some curved lines not yet understood. No. 2003 of the same plate is also well preserved. It has the hand as in 2020, the rebus also, and the sign for _Ymix_ is slightly different, being modified with a sign like the top of a cross, the symbol of the _four winds_. The symbol _Ymix_ may be seen, by a reference to Plate XXVII (lower half) of the MS. _Troano_, to relate to the _rain_. The figure of that plate is pouring rain upon the earth from the orifices represented by _Ymix_. The cross of the _four winds_ is still more plain in Nos. 2072, 3084, and 3072.
The part of this symbol 2020 and its synonyms which consists of curved lines occupying the left hand one-third of the whole _chiffre_ occurs only in this set of characters, and thus I cannot say _certainly_ what this particular part of the hieroglyph means; but if the reader will glance back over the last one hundred lines he will find that these _chiffres_ contain the _rebus_ CUKULCAN, the sign of a _human hand_, of the _sun_, of the _rain_, and of the _four winds_.