The Hieroglyphics of Easter Island.

Abstract

IN the spring of this year (1873), the cast of an incised tablet from Easter Island, the duplicate of one of those lately presented to the Anthropological Institute by Mr. Edwyn Reed, was exhibited at Burlington House by Mr. Lamprey, of the Royal Geographical Society, from whom I subsequently learned, that the French Missionaries in the Island discovered three tablets of hard wood soon after the visit of H.M.S. " Topaze " in Nov. 1868, in one of the stone houses, called by the natives "Taura Renga," where the kings or chiefs formerly resided.*Two of these tablets were entrusted to the captain of a Chilean corvette in January 1870, and they were soon after deposited in the National Museum at Santiago de Chile.The third was sent to Paris, but does not appear to have reached its destination owing to the war.Paper impressions of the tablets at Santiago were communicated to the English Ethnological Society early in 1870.Owing, however, to injuries received in transit, and the want of sufficient information, a doubt arose whether they were anythino more than stamps for marking the nati-ve cloth,-and this view, it appears from Petermann's "Journal," was adopted in Berlin also,t to which city copies had been despatched.Little attention has, it would appear, been since given to the subject, though casts subsequently made under Mr. Reed's direction were sent early in the present year to London, Berlin, and Cassel.On a superficial examination of the signs with which the tablets are covered, an eye acquainted with Easter Island * The photograph of a drawing of one of these stone houses, is given in Mr.

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