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Vineland, might have been used as an ornamental timber, 

 various passages were translated from the Icelandic, which 

 were accompanied by the opinion of the editor of the Anti- 

 quitates Americance, from which it appeared that the mazer 

 was a kind of maple, a tree which still flourishes in New 

 England ; and this opinion was further supported by a line 

 from Spenser's Fairy Queen, and by the etymological simi- 

 larity of the word mazer to the Latin acer. 



3. In reference to an inscription on the Assonet Rock, in 

 Massachusetts, the author alluded to the improbability that 

 Thorfinn Kai'lsefne — the limit of whose discoveries is sup- 

 posed to be marked by the rock — would have omitted all men- 

 tion of his own name in recording them ; and showed that 

 certain letters, on the supposed absence of which another 

 theory had been formed, were present in the most approved 

 copies of the inscription, three drawings of which were ex- 

 hibited to the Academy. 



Mr. Downes in the second place, propounded his conjec- 

 ture respecting the future discoveries of the Northern Anti- 

 quaries in the field of American research. From the simi- 

 larity both in spelling and meaning of Haiti, " highlands,'' 

 (the restored name of St. Domingo, or Hispaniola,) to the Ice- 

 landic local designation Heithi, as well as that ofBohio, " the 

 house," (another name of Haiti,) to the Icelandic hud, (the 

 English " booth,") also used as a local designation in that 

 language, he inferred that the Northmen may have visited 

 the island ; and he showed, from the northern languages, that 

 the final d, being mute, occasioned no difficulty. He sup- 

 ported his conjecture by adducing the authority of Doctor 

 Barton, cited by an American correspondent of the editor of 

 the Antiquitates Americanee, as to the existence of rocks simi- 

 lar to that of Asonet, in the confines of the rivers Lata and 

 Maragnon, in South America, on which, however, it would be 

 premature to lay much stress. The probability of a Norse 

 discovery of the West Indies he maintained from some par- 



