372 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



That fades before the dayhght's ardent beam. 



Sleep on ! though in your sepulchre no dream 



Of the to-morrow shall wake you again, 



Nor in your eyes reanimate the gleam 



Of passion's fire, as once the voice of fame, 



To win on sanguine fields of war for you a deathless name. 



III. 



Ah ! Could ye from this tenement arise, 



Incarnate, as of old, with vocal tongue, 



Some race of yore, mayhap, might greet mine eyes. 



Untold in fable and by muse unsung. 



Who, when the sires of these old oaks were young, 



Whose deep'ning roots amid your bones have crept, 



And o'er your tomb their hoary branches flung. 



Their haunts in these wild vales and forests kept. 



Or o'er these hills, with bow and lance, on martial errands swept. 



IV. 



No harp of muse can to my listening ear, 



From the far, dim oblivion of the past. 



Call up the story of the race who here. 



Deep pillowed, sleep death's sleep, the last. 



Ere from the grave awakened by the blast 



And loud reveille of that trumpet's peal. 



Each quickened ghost shall rising stand aghast, 



And e'en the bosom of this pile shall feel 



The tramp, and from its dusty depths its dead reveal. 



THE ALPHABET IN PREHISTORIC AMERICA. 



At the recent Science Convention, at Cincinnati, Major Wm. S. Beebe, of 

 Brooklyn, read a very suggestive paper on the inscribed records of the Mound 

 Builders, especially those discovered at Piqua, Ohio, and Davenport, Iowa. 

 The former were on tablets of earthernwafe, but the latter inscribed slates. 

 On the Piqua tablets the characters are in horizontal lines, and in four of these 

 lines they were, in each case, six in number. In the fifth and remaining in-' 

 instance there were five, but this arrangement was some distance, in the longi- 

 tudinal direction of the tablet, from the group first mentioned, which were in 

 both cases written in couples. 



One of the Davenport slates was inscribed on one side, the other on both. 

 The stone inscribed on but side bore on its surface a series of codcentric circles. 

 Between the outer two of these were twelve equi-distant signs, presumably the 



