150 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE, 
Greek alphabet, others may probably be referred to Egyptian and Hetruscan. 
But while we found fair representations of Egyptian, Greek, Punic, and other char- 
acters, we risk no general interpretation of their writing. Mr. Everhart believes 
that the circular depressions refer to the heavenly bodies, and concludes that this 
glant race were sun worshipers, a not improbable conclusion. 
Were the writer to risk an opinion concerning the deszgn of these inscriptions, 
he would suggest that they refer solely to those buried inthismound. ‘The tablet 
contains three V shaped characters similar to those found in the Great Pyramid, 
and which Prof. Piazzi Smith, and others, refer to as symbols of power or distinc- 
tion. Inthis case they may refer to the three important graves found in this 
mound. 
As to the genuineness of the find there seems to be no room for doubt, as 
Dr. Everhart, an intelligent explorer, took it out in the presence of a number of 
witnesses. As to age, it bears the marks of antiquity. It is doubtless as old as 
the mound from which it was exhumed. 
Messrs. Robert Clark, Charles L. Low and Dr. H. H. Hill, gentlemen of 
more than local celebrity in archeological science, to whom, with the writer, is 
was submitted for examination, gave Mr. Everhart a written statement of our 
views concerning this tablet, concluding as follows: ‘‘We have examined this stone 
very carefully after hearing Mr. Everhart’s statement concerning it, and we are 
satisfied that it is not of recent procuction, but has every appearance of being a 
veritable Mound Builder’s relic, and is well worthy a serious effort to unravel its 
mysteries.” 
THE HAIR AND BEARD AS RACIAL CHARACTERISTICS. 
Prof. Otis T. Mason in the American Naturalist for June, in commenting on 
various anthropological papers in the Revue a’ Anthropologie says: The article of 
Mme Royer is designed to show that the human race is descended from a species 
of animal that never had any hair, in opposition to the generally received theory 
that our race has lost its hair in time. Following close after this domes Mr. 
Wake’s paper upon the beard, and on pages 170-175, a review, by M. Vars, upon 
Ecker’s ‘‘Systéme pileux et ses anomalies chez ’homme,” so that three-fourths of 
the original communications of the number relate to this external characteristic, 
After a very extended collation of authorities who have remarked upon the abun- 
dance or scarcity of hair upon tribes in all parts of the world, Mr. Wake con- 
cludes with Peschel that the beard is agood racial characteristic, and ‘‘ that there 
are races upon whom it is developed in all its exhuberances, while there are oth- 
ers in which this distinction appears to be incompletely produced.” The author 
then goes on to seek the causes of this difference. The growth of hair upon the 
face cannot be attributed to such causes as alimentation and climate. Doubtless 
these have had their effects; but the true cause must be sought in the sum total 
of all the influences, moral as well as physical, to which the organism has been 
