IS 



The Cieifinati Tablet f was found in a mouud at Oicinuati, Ohio, in the year 

 1841. This tablet " is made of a fine grained compact limestone of alight 

 brown color. It measures five inches in length, three in breadth, and two and 

 six tenths inches in the middle, and is about half an inch in thickness." One 

 side is wrought into curious figures in low relief, quite symmetrically disposed 

 on each side of a median line. The figures are in the shape of scrolls, and 

 curves, not unlike the conventional designs of leaves on wall paper. 



The obverse side of the tablets is flat, having three longitudinal diverging- 

 grooves. Mr. Squier was inclined to believe that this tablet resembled peculiar 

 stamps made of burnt clay, which occur in the Mississipi mounds, and in Mexico. 

 These stamps, have fanciful or imitative figures upon them in low relief, and 

 were used to imprint ornamental figures upon the cloth, or prepared skins, of the 

 people. Dr. Daniel Wilson in his " Prehistoric Man. " questions Squier's inter- 

 pretation of its use, and suggests its being some standard of measurement, 

 from the occurrence of two series of lines, bordering each end of the tablet. 



It does not seem that Dr. Wilson is justified in this opinion, for the larger- 

 lines vary in their distance from each other, and the smaller spaces vary even 

 more than the larger ones in proportion. A workman capable of duplicating- 

 so closely, in bilateral symmetry, the difficult and odd shaped designs upon the 

 tablet would have found it the simplest thing to have made equidistant spaces. 



IMPLEMENTS OF HORN AND BOXE. 



While the shell heaps of Denmark, Florida, and New England, present a 

 number of implements made of bone, and a few made of horn, those of the 

 Omori mounds are mostly made of horn, — or more correctly, the antlers of the 

 deer. Wyman figures, in his article on the shell heaps of New England 

 twelve implements made of bone, and one made of horn. Three of these are 

 awl shaped implements ; the others are variously notched or barbed at the ends. 

 One has a notched edge like a saw, another has a blunt pointed extremity with 

 seven notches on one side and eight on the other. Another one has two 

 notches on one side and three on the other. One is barbed on one side, others 

 are bluntly pointed, and one looks like an ivory tooth-pick. A tooth is also re- 

 presented, ground down on one side to a cutting edge. The implements of 

 horn are chisel, or gouge shaped, and rude. 



The Florida mounds also yielded implements of bone,, every one of them 

 pointed. One is in the shape of a long slender bodkin ; another one is worked 

 from a longitudinal fragment of bone. Not one of these show a notch, or con- 



t In 1872 Col. Charles Whittlesey pronounced this a forgery. Rohert Clarke Esq., of Cincinnati, 



has completely vindicated its genuineness in ;i pamphlet published in 1876, entitled " Prehistoric 

 Remains of Cincinnati, Ohio." 



