305 
SCIENTIFIC SUMMARY. 
ANTHROPOLOGY. 
North American Inscribed Stones . — In a burial mound on Cook Farm 
near Davenport, Iowa, the Rev. J. Gass has found some inscribed tablets of 
bituminous shale, which, if they prove genuine, of which we must confess 
there seems to be some doubt, will take their place among the most interest- 
ing prehistoric pieces of human workmanship. The mound under exploration 
contained two grave-hollows, in one of which, at a depth of about five and a-half 
feet from the surface there were three skeletons, two of adults, with the third 
(that of a child) lying between them ; with these were found copper beads and 
copper axes, besides other objects. The second grave-hollow contained some 
fragments of skull-bones, vertebrae, &c., and the inscribed tablets above- 
mentioned. Mr. Gass describes the mode of their occurrence as follows : — 
“ The two tablets were lying close together on the hard clay, in the north- 
west corner of the grave, about five and a-half feet from the surface of the 
mound. . . . The smaller one is engraved on one side only, and the 
larger on both sides. . . . Both were closely encircled by a single row 
of limestones. They were covered on both sides with clay, on removal of 
which the markings were for the first time discovered. A number of frag- 
ments of the coal-slate lay in the immediate vicinity of the tablets. It 
should also be remarked that I did not leave the mound after penetrating 
through the frost* until the tablets were discovered and taken from their 
resting-place with my own hands.” 
These tablets are described and discussed at considerable length by Dr. J. 
Farquharson, whose account of them is illustrated with reproductions of 
photographs. Dr. Farquharson also notices the various inscribed stones 
which have been previously found in the United States, most of which 
appear to have been, if not frauds, at any rate not genuine ; the best of them 
is that of Dighton Rock near the mouth of Taunton River in Massachusetts, 
which is a Runic inscription recording the occupation of that region by 151 
Northmen with Thorfins, who is identified with Thorfinn Karlsefn, with 
whose saga it closely agrees. 
The smaller of the two tablets is called by Dr. Farquharson a “ Calendar- 
* The excavation was made on the 10th of January, when the ground wa^ 
frozen hard. A shell-layer traversing the mound above the graves is said to 
have been undisturbed. 
NEW SERIES, YOL. II. — NO. VII. X 
