212 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



feet — width, where clay and soil meet, three feet nine inches: from bottom to 

 where clay and soil meet, three feet — width, at bottom, five feet one inch; con- 

 tents : flint chips, broken pottery, worked bone, shells, pebbles, ashes, charcoal 

 and a fine arrow point, the only whole instrument found. 



Other remains of these people are found in cellars, wells and cisterns as be- 

 for stated. These are not graves, as no human bones are found therein. They 

 are small masses of debris from camp, apparently, with occasionally broken im- 

 plements and rarely whole ones. In excavating a cellar in Marion east of Muddy, 

 at a depth of two and one-half feet one of these "places" was found. About 

 thirty five feet west in digging a kitchen foundation, at a depth of ten inches 

 another was found; both containing broken pottery, flints, etc., and the first 

 charred corn. In digging a cistern between the kitchen foundation trenches and 

 at a depth of eleven inches red clay was struck, which had no appearance of 

 having been disturbed. Twenty- six inches of this undisturbed clay was gone 

 through when a darker clay of the same quality was found, also undisturbed to a. 

 depth of twenty-eight inches, when a few bits of charcoal and a small amount of 

 ashes were found. This was followed twelve inches, where upon a bed of ashes 

 were found a rub-stone, a fine flint knife, some fragments of pottery, a beaver's 

 tooth and a peculiar stone tablet. 



Taking these and the ashes away they were found to have been in a bowl 

 •artificially hollowed from the natural limestone formation. Depth of bowl, bed 

 of ashes and relics, nine inches; making a total distance from surface to bottom 

 of bowl, seven feet two inches. 



THE TABLET OF THE CROSS. 



F. F. HILDER. 



In the July number of the Review which I have just received there is an 

 article by Mr. Warren Watson on "The Tablet of the Cross," which contains 

 some errors that I am tempted to reply to. The purpose of the article appears 

 to be a criticism on the value of Prof. E. S. Holden's researches in the extremely 

 interesting field of " The Hieroglyphics of Central America," which that gentle- 

 man has been pursuing with commendable earnestness and with promising results. 

 The critic refers to an article on the subject written by Prof. Holden which ap- 

 peared in the Century Magazine for December, 1881. He says : "In the article 

 referred to Mr. Edward S. Holden gives the result of his researches in this field, 

 with so much eclat that the reader is almost ready to admit his claim as discover- 

 er of a clue to the difficult problem. This clue is the result of the study of a 

 segment of hieroglyphs from the celebrated "Tablet of the Cross" at Palenque, 

 and this being the fact a grave doubt arises as to the value of his discovery." 



Mr. Watson then refers to Stephens' well known work and quotes from it, 

 that the right or east slab of the three which formed the tablet " is broken, and 

 unfortunately altogether destroyed." 



