Ancient Linear Measures. 21 3 



Bryce Wright, there is a gold band 23f English inches long, 

 evidently intended or cut off for 2 Mexican feet (= 23 J inches). 

 A number of articles in the same collection measure exactly 1, H, 

 2, 2 J, and 3 inches Mexican. A flat jade object, like a paper 

 knife, with two holes for suspension, probably, to a workman's 

 belt, measures precisely 6 inches Mexican, and may have been a 

 half- foot measure. 



3. Mound-Builders of North America. — Prof. Daniel Wilson, 

 of Toronto, in the second edition of his " Prehistoric Man," p. 221, 

 describes a curious stone tablet or implement, found in a grave 

 mound at Cincinnati in 1 841 (it is also figured or described in 

 Squier and Davis, and other works). His figure is given § 

 size, but is not quite accurate, for I have since received a rubbing 

 from a cast of the original in the Blackmore Museum at Salis- 

 bury, and do not find that Dr. Wilson's figure is correct, nor the 

 description of some of the details. This tablet has never been 

 thoroughly explained. Some have thought it to be a calendar, 

 others a measure, and some a mere stamp for printing textile 

 materials. The greater part of its upper surface is covered with 

 a scroll-like pattern, but at each end are scales, containing each two 

 sets of divisions, evidently intended for some special purpose. 

 Describing it best from the tracing or rubbing sent me by Dr. 

 Blackmore, of Salisbary, it has at one end a series of 23 +1 

 small nearly equal divisions, in connection with 7 larger ones, say 

 3J small to each larger one ; and at the opposite end a series of 

 6 larger divisions, in connection with 20+4 smaller ones, some- 

 what similarly disposed. The length of each scale is about 2^- 

 inches English. The longer sides of the tablet are curved to a 

 12 mound inch radius. The length and breadth of the stone 

 tablet itself is very nearly 5 inches English by 2J- at the narrower 

 middle part ; consequently, almost exactly the same by Mexican 

 measure. It struck me that this tablet looked very much as hav- 

 ing something to do with a possible half-foot measure ; and I 

 further observed at each corner, not before noticed by any archaeo- 

 logist, two straight lines, evidently not forming part of the general 

 ornamental scroll pattern, which I guessed might possibly have 

 been intended to represent the mound builders' standard inch, or 

 finger breadth. On scaling this as a foot of 12 inches I found I 

 had obtained means of a measure for many North American 



