Note 45 — VOL. XXVI., No. 152.—NOVEMBER, 1877. (continued 3)

Mormon books contain representations of six plates of brass, inscribed with unknown figures, which are said to have been dug out of a mound in Pike County, Illinois, in 1843. Like those which Moroni is supposed to have revealed to Joseph Smith they are described as bell-shaped and fastened together by a ring. But the evidence that any such plates were ever found is not satisfactory, and the characters on the published pictures of them bear little or no resemblance to those which Joseph Smith presented to the world as a fac-simile of a part of the Book of Mormon.