SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



In connection with the correspondence of Prof. Spencer F. Baird, 

 Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, hereinbefore presented, some 

 communications of an earlier date from the same gentleman, concerning" 

 the shale tablets, should have been also included, as they have an im- 

 portant bearing upon the questions under discussion. They were, how- 

 ever, inadvertently omitted, and, though out of their proper order, will 

 now be presented. 



Upon the discovery of those tablets, the interestuig event was imme- 

 diately reported to Professor Baird, and by his request they were for- 

 warded to Washington for his personal inspection. The tablets remained 

 there during a session of the National Academy, were placed on exhi- 

 bition and inspected by its members, and the results ai-e stated by 

 Professor Baird in these communications. In connection with the 

 strong evidences of authenticity disclosed by the circumstances of the 

 discovery, this favorable report from the Smithsonian Institution greatly 

 influenced the subsecjuent action of the Davenport Academy in pre- 

 senting these tablets to the scientific world as genuine mound-relics. 

 Probably this would never have been seriously questioned but from the 

 fact that one of these tablets has on it the tracing of a huge animal, 

 generally supposed to represent a mammoth, and hence their authen- 

 ticity has been made the object of a virulent attack by the Bureau of 

 Ethnology. In now presenting these valuable communications we 

 take the liberty of placing in italics certain jmssages to which we desire 

 to call especial attention : 



National Mu.seum, Smithsonian Institution, ) 

 Washincton, A])ril ii, 1877. ) 

 Dear Sir: The box of tablets came to hand in my absence in 

 Florida, and was kept undisturbed until my return a few days ago, 

 and when opened everything was found in first-rate condition. There 

 appears every indication of genuineness in the specimens, and the discov- 

 ery is certainly one 0/ very high interest. We shall have photographs of 



