FOSSIL FORESTS OF YELLOWSTONE PARK. 373 



zodiacal signs. The slate had two perforations on one of its edges, evidently 

 for suspension. 



Major Beebe claimed that the Picjua inscriptions are the names of the eight 

 zodiacal signs on the Davenport slate, excepting Capricornus, Aries, Cancer, 

 and Libra, which four signs are represented by four initial letters on the back of 

 one of the Piqua tablets, and which representing the north, west, south, and east 

 respectively, and corresponding to the Tucatec Bacobs, or world holders, as they 

 were called, and to which a peculiar importance is attached. 



The forms of the Piqua letters are almost precisely those that occur about 

 the Mediterranean, and whose phonetic values have been determined by Alois 

 Hess. Major Beebe believes that he has been able to trace each form of letter 

 to aboriginal American picture symbols, in which the same significance obtains 

 in both European and American forms. Having fixed the significance of these 

 letters, he has, he says, deciphered the inscription on the stone from the Grave 

 Creek Mound, West Virginia, and that on the Pemberton ax In all these cases 

 the names deciphered refer to certain stellar combinations, and in the case of the 

 slates and tables, which are perforated, were probably in the nature of charms. 

 In the case of the Pemberton ax part of the inscription is read with edge of the 

 ax up, the remainder with the edge down, and this inscription, too, probably, 

 had reference to some rite or species of devination in which the ax played an im- 

 portant part. 



A very significant feature in regard to this ax is, that the names read on the 

 ax, when held with the edge up and down, have been preserved with the change 

 of but one letter by an Esquimau tribe in Northwest America as the names of 

 good and evil respectively, whereas the ax itself was found at Pemberton, N. J. 

 The generally prevalent idea as to the relation of the Esquimaux and pre-glacial 

 man makes this incident peculiarly suggestive. — Scientific American. 



GEOLOGY. 



FOSSIL TORESTS OF YELLOWSTONE PARK. 



As explorations of the fossils forests of the Park have each succeeding year 

 greatly added to our knowledge of their area, magnitude and wonders, during 

 the past year I explored the hitherto unknown forests on Canon Creek and other 

 localities of the Yellowstone Range, Mount Washburn, and the basaltic range 

 between the fingers of the Yellowstone Lake ; also those in the mountains east of 

 it, in the Hoodoo region, and on the Stephens Range, besides many additional 

 localities on the Pelican and Warm Springs Creeks, as well as other well-known 

 forests. 



V-24 



