^"8 The Square Crinoid Column. 



the human face on the same plate, was perhaps never seen before The 

 colts or wedges have also their concord and discrepance. The three 

 larger are of silicified wood: the grain, bark and knot marks strongly 

 resemble sycamore; some are jasper-colored, others gray and j^ellow. 

 I think I have never before seen instruments Avith keener edge or 

 brighter polish. 



"I send also for your acceptance and consideration the photographs 

 o^ Uvo curved stones: the one is a copy of the disc obtained f)r me by 

 my friend Dr. Kobinson, of Lake Washington, Miss., and which was 

 taken out of an Issaquena mound; the other photograph is of the world- 

 renowned Toltec Calendar. The first one, with its birds, serpents, and 

 pipe border, was the moving cause of my subsequent investigation in 

 Issaquena. The contemplati(m of this stone excited in me an archae- 

 ological interest I had never known before. My memory carried me 

 hiitk to the many hours I had spent under the walls of the Cathedral 

 of Mexico trying to unravel the mystery of that old record of Time. I 

 have fancied a resemblance, but I cannot establish a complete agree- 

 ment between the two tablets. Here are the eighteen pipes of tha bor- 

 der, corresponding to the eighteen months of the year, biit the twenty 

 days of the month and the five intercaleries are not to be found. The 

 thirteen hieroglyj)hical figures and the four zodiacal signs, which as 

 multiples give the forty-two years of the Aztec cycle, are also absent on 

 the Mississippi stone. 



Yours veiy truly, 



W. Marshall Anderson." 



The Square Crinoid Column — By S. A Mili.er. 



The square ci'inoid column has been found at various localities, in 

 the upper p)art of the Cincinnati Group. It has been found about 

 Lebanon, in Warren county, in Clinton county, and about Versailles, 

 Indiana. Dr. W. H. H. Hunter of Versailles recently found a slab, 

 with several specimens upon it, some of them showing the square 

 column, as it passes into a beautiful round one. The opinion I have 

 formed, from an examination of these specimens is, that the column of 

 the crinoid is round, until it approaches the head, where it changes 

 suddenly to a square column. It is about the size of an average col- 

 umn of the Heterocrinus simplex. Generally every fourth plate, in the 

 column, is about twice as thick as either of the three preceding ones; 

 the thicker plates are not, however, of uniform thickness, and it may 

 be that sometimes the third plate or the fifth one is the thickest in- 

 stead of the fourth. Where the column is round the thicker plates 

 project very sightly, if at all, beyond the thinner ones, but where the 

 column is square the thicker plates project decidedly beyond the thin- 

 ner ones. Each plate is marked with lines radiating from the central 

 part to the circumference in such manner, that the column shows two 



