Identification of the British Inch as the Unit of Measure. 231 



THE IDENTIFICATION OF THE BRITISH INCH AS THE 

 UNIT OF MEASURE OF THE MOUND BUILDERS OF 

 THE OHIO VALLEY. 



Continued from page 162. 



APPENDIX C. 



The "Richardson Tablet" the " Gest Tablet" and the 

 "Clarke Tablet" as related to and connected with the 

 "Gridley Measuring Stone.'' 



Introductory remarks on the significance of the Richardson and 

 Gest tablets. 



These tablets are pictures or ideographs. The pictures are 

 phallic and through the phallic idea give rise to an expression of 

 measures of time, as their chief function. These tablets are of 

 very great archaeological value, in the opinion of the writer, as 

 affording a solution by their simple plainness of the much vexed 

 question of the pre-historic intendment of the symbol of t/ie cross. 

 They afford an interpretation of the so frequent cross symbols of 

 Central America ; and by this help, these in turn almost assuredly 

 interpret the more obscured Asiatic representations. No one after 

 examining the Richardson Tablet need go astray in assigning a 

 proper causative idea for the use of the emblem of the cross in 

 prayers for rain in Central America. These tablets lead us to a 

 comprehension in an important degree, tpiite satisfactory, of the 

 Palenque Cross; and that in related connection with the old Mex- 

 ican hieroglyphical manuscript cross of the M. de Ferjervary man 

 uscript at Budapesth Hungary, pictured in volumne 22 of the 

 Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge. In this last the tree of 

 life rises out of the yoni ; under another meaning of the same sym- 

 bolism life rising out of death ; and this is part of the significance 

 of the Palenque Cross. Having obtained a clear idea to some ex- 

 tent, of the symbolic interpretation of these, we become reassured 

 as to a like significance attaching to the yoni and lingham symbols 

 of the Hindus, and especially to the asJieras or groves, as depicted 

 by Dr. Inman in his " Ancient Faiths embodied in Ancient 

 Names. " Indeed the phallic creative or generative symbol seems 

 radical as to all systems of religion, ancient and modern, pagan 

 and Hebrew and Christian. So far from being hurtful to a rationa 



