Ohio History Journal

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Editorialana

Editorialana.                      393

 

following device: A shield, in form, a circle. On it, in the foreground,

on the right, a sheaf of wheat; on the left, a bundle of seventeen arrows,

both standing erect; in the background, and rising above the sheaf and

arrows, a mountain range, over which shall appear a rising sun.

SEC. 2. The great seal of the state shall be two and one-half inches

in diameter, on which shall be engraved the device as described in the

preceding section, and it shall be surrounded with these words: "The

great seal of the State of Ohio."

SEC. 4. The act passed April 6, 1868 (0. L. 63, 185), entitled an act

to provide the devices and great seal and coat of arms of the State of

Ohio, and said act as amended April 16, 1867 (0. L. 64, 191), be and

the same are hereby repealed.

It will thus be seen that the motto Imperium in Imperio only existed

during the short life of two years. It may not be uninteresting to note

that the Legislature which adopted the "imperial" motto was a Repub-

lican one, while the repealing assembly was Democratic, being the same

which elected Hon. Allen G. Thurman to the United States Senate.

The coat of arms practically as we now have it was originally adopted

in year 1802 or soon after the State was admitted into the Union.

 

 

HARPERS MONTHLY AND SERPENT MOUND.

Harper's Monthly for January current, has an interesting article by

Prof. Harlan Ingersoll Smith, Department of Anthropology, Ameri-

can Museum of Natural History, entitled the Great Pyramid. In this

sketch, which treats of a few of the most prominent archaeological monu-

ments in the United States, Prof. Smith describes Fort Ancient and the

Serpent Mound. After speaking of the preservation by our Society of

these valuable relics of a prehistoric day, Prof. Smith says: "It ( Fort

Ancient) is now preserved in a public park, like the Great Serpent, Ohio's

other famous aboriginal earth-work, and, like that, is controlled for the

public good and preserved for posterity by the Ohio State Historical So-

ciety. Nor should it be forgotten, that the good work initiated by Pro-

fessor Putnam of the Peabody Museum at Harvard, and followed by the

Ohio State Historical Society, is of the highest value to the country at

large and to future generations, as well as deserving of the highest praise

in our own time." We quote in full Prof. Smith's description of Serpent

Mound. "Of all these mounds, the Great Serpent appeals peculiarly to the

imagination. About its story, which is yet to be told, the fancy of the

twentieth century weaves traditions of serpent-worship in a forgotten ci-

vilization, or dreams of Eden and man's first disobedience. On the top of

a rocky promontory extending into the beautiful valley of Brush Creek, in

Adams county, Ohio, in the year 1848, Squier and Davis, the pioneers of

American archaeology, located the Serpent in a dense forest, and first de-

scribed it. An earthen effigy, complete and symmetrical, the Great Serpent