X.— The Fletcher Stone.— By K. G. T. Weiisteh, B. A., 

 Yarmouth, N. S. 



(Read lUh January, 1S9£.) 



The Fletcher Stone was found by Dr. Ricliard Fletcher, a 

 retired army surgeon, on his place near the town of" Yarmouth. 

 As nearly as I can ascertain, this was eighty years ago*. Soon 

 afterwards copies of it were sent to savants in different parts of 

 the world, and many theories formed to account for its curious 

 markings. Sir Daniel Wilson received a fac-simile of the inscrip- 

 tion in 1857 from Dr. G. J. Farish ; and he refers to the stone in his 

 " Prehistoric Man ;" and, at greater length, in a paper read before 

 the Royal Society of Canada in 1890. The N. S. Historical 

 Society has had the stone under consideration, and they also for- 

 warded a copy to the learned President of Toronto in 1886. It 

 was the subject of a paper by Mr. H. Philips, before the American 

 Philosophical Society in 1884. A Yarmouth Herald of July, 

 1884, gives a cut of it ; and the New York Herald for July 27, 

 1890, has a copy of the inscription accompanying an article which 

 claims for it Carian origin. 



The stone is the common rock known as county stone, — quartz- 

 ite, I presume. It measures about 31x20x13 inches; and has been 

 split from the parent boulder wdiere a thin vein of quartz tra- 

 versed it. One side is thus left quite level, and tolerably smooth, 

 excepting for a bit of raised jagged edge. A good idea of its 

 appearance may be obtained from the cut which illustrates Sir 

 Daniel Wilson's paper, in Vol. VIII of the Transactions R. S.C. The 

 plaster-paris cast which I have present shows the exact size and 

 shape of the characters. They are thirteen in number, and ex- 

 tend in a line almost across the flat side of the stone. The end 

 of the inscription is shown V)}^ a faint period. One can notice 

 how the characters become shallower towards this end, as if the 

 cutter was getting tired ; and larger, by a natural tendency. 



*8ir Daniel Wilson in his paper " Vinland of the Northmen," Vol. VIII of the R. S. C's Pro- 

 cesdingsand Transactions, quotes Dr. Farish as writing liini in 1857, that the stone had then been 

 known upwards of forty -five years. The present owner of the stone, Samuel Ryerson, Esq., cor- 

 roborates this. 



