456 The American Naturalist. [May, 
written about, either in Europe or in the United States, and specu- 
lative theories advanced concerning their origin and uses. 
It was in 1847 that Messrs Squier and Davis, partners in 
original research in the state of Ohio, brought their operations 
to a close by the production of the “ Ancient Monuments of the 
Mississippi Valley,” the comprehensive work which methodically 
displayed all that was then known of the antiquities of the great 
region implied by that geographical expression. In this book 
(on page 206) there is a description, with wood-cut illustration, of 
a block of sandstone which had been found in some unnam 
Ohio mound. The stone weighed between thirty and forty pounds, 
and showed several circular depressions, evidently artificial, which 
our authors thought were used as moulds for the purpose of 
hammering thin plates of copper into small bosses of concavo- 
convex shape, such as had been often found. This is the proto- 
type of the cup-stones of the western hemisphere.’ 
Professor Daniel Wilson, of Toronto, in his “ Prehistoric Man,” 
(third edition, 1876, Vol. I.), also devotes several pages to the 
Subject, and gives drawings of two cup-stones found, too, in Ohio. 
Of the first he speaks thus: “ A cupped sandstone block on the 
banks of the Ohio, a little below Cincinnati. Others much larger 
were described to me by Dr. Hill,” etc. The second one he 
describes as a “ cupped sandstone boulder,” found near Tronos 
[Ironton] M i8747 The author, in this work, considers that m 
use of these cups—everywhere, all the world over—was to grind 
the ends of stone implements, and that where they were accom- 
panied by concentric circles and other devices the latter were no 
more than additions of idle fancy. 
The late Professor Charles Rau, of Washington, D. C., icles 
however, to be the first writer in the United States to bring ue 
ward and collate comprehensively in a special treatise the data os 
relating to cup-stones on this side of the Atlantic, and to treat 
_| Were the facts concerning the 7eo/o/inga rock, situated sixteen leagues SOT" in the 
i Mexico, exactly known, it might with propriety take precedence here 
text of the Squier and Davis stone; for it was discovered in 1805 by 
who said that on its surface were some circular holes of little depth. 
dissimilarity of the published representations of it, however, Professor Rat 
that a proper doubt remai 1, not to be removed until the stone had again been 
- and reported upon. 
