THE BELL:

This article comes from the famous periodical Scientific American in June of 1852 entitled "A relic of a by-gone age."

A few days ago a powerful blast was made in the rock at Meeting House Hill in Dorchester, a few rods south of Rev. Mr. Hall's meeting house.    The blast threw out an immense mass of rock, some of the pieces weighing several tons and scattered small fragments in all directions.    Among them was picked up a metallic vessel in two parts rent assunder by the explosion.  On; putting the two parts together it formed a bell shaped vessel, 4 1/2 inchs high, 6 1/2 inches at the base 2 1/2 inches at the top, and about an eighth of an inch thickness.    The body of this vessel resembles zinc in color or a composition metal, in which there is a considerable portion of silver.    On the sides there are six figures of a flower or bouquet beautifully inlaid with pure silver, and around the lower part of the vessel a vine or wreath , inlaid also with silver.  
The chasing, carving, and inlahying are exquisitly done by the art of some cunning workman.    This curious and unknown vessel was blown out of the solid pudding stone, fifteen feet below the surface.    It is now in the possession of Mr John Kettell.    Dr. J.V.C.Smith who has recently travelled in the east and examined hundreds of curiouusdomestic itensils and has drawings of them, has never seen anything resembling this.   He has taken a drawing and accurate dimensions of it to be submitted to the scientific community. There is no doubt but that this curiousity was blown out of the rock, as above stated; but will Professor Agassiz or some other sceintific man please to tell us how it came there?   The matter is worthy of investigation as there is no deception in the case.

Like many anomolus finds from past ages this anomolous object was relagated to a university closet unknown and uncatalogued . Further investigation reveals that the rock out of which it was blasted was limestone supposedly millions of years old. So how did an artistic obvious work of art get buried in limestone. Perhaps some limestone formations are not hundreds of millions of years old. This is not by any means the only example of a human object found out of place.    This object has recently been located and the following information has come to light from the magazine Ancient American. .  

The magazine states that according to Milton Swanson of Maine, the artifact had been given to Harvard college where it was relagated to a closet.   A building supervisor then took it home and sold it to someone, either this mr Swanson or a friend.    The present owner has taken it to experts and had it examined.    No explanations from them were forth coming.    Their analysis revealed a brass material with zinc, iron, and lead.    The inlay is pure silver.    The fine arts Museum in Boston had it analyzed with the cooperation of M.I.T. No answer as to its time period or origin has been proposed.   However citizens of india when shown the bell often remark it looks of indian origin.

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