332 DAVENPORT ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES. 



"It is impossible in most cases to verify the statements of an anthor, 

 and therefore neither the Commission nor the Institution can be responsi- 

 ble/or more than the general character of a memoir." 



Your Institution therefore accepts responsibility for the "'general 

 character" of its publications, and this, you will concede, would re- 

 (juire the exclusion of all libelous, scurrilous, and unscientific papers. 

 Now, therefore, should there appear among your ]:)uljlications an arti- 

 cle assailing a scientific society without reason, charging fraud upon its 

 members without i)roof, made uji of second-hand information without 

 scientific merit, the American public would be justified in holding your 

 Institution derelict in duty. That such was the "general character" of 

 Mr. Henshaw's paper must be evident when so excellent an archaeolo- 

 gist as Professor Peet, of the American Antiquarian, says of it: "We 

 should have considered it a libel if it was said of us." And again : 

 "There is scarcely a truthful or convincing paragraph in the whole 

 article, and many of the remarks are as careless and groundless as they 

 can well be." And when so exact and careful a writer as Dr. D. G. 

 Brinton thus condemns it: "A would-be critical article on 'Animal 

 Carvings from Mounds in the Mississippi Valley' is inserted from the 

 pen of Henry W. Henshaw. It would have been of more weight had 

 the writer known more of his topic from personal observation, and de- 

 pended less on second-hand statements. The Bureau should confine 

 its writers to what they know of their own knowledge." And again: 

 "From my first reading of his article I concluded it a paper not com- 

 posed in the true si^irit of science, and out of i)lace in the publications 

 of the Bureau." And when so eminent an authority in anthropology 

 as Prof. Otis T. Mason, of the National Museum, hurls at it this sting- 

 ing anathema : " The last word that should fall from the lips of a brother 

 naturalist is '■fraud."" These few citations, from, the vast number at 

 hand, will justify me in assuming that,, without the aid of a "Commis- 

 sion," the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, on account of its 

 faulty "general character," must have ])romptly condemned this paper 

 as wholly unworthy of publication. 



In your closing paragraph you fail to distinguish between the "an- 

 ticjuity" and the "authenticity" of the relics in (piestion. This distinc- 

 tion has been carefully observed in the statements we have made, and, 

 so far as our Academy is concerned, the "authenticity" of our relics is 

 the only ([uestion under discussion. Among experienced archaeolo- 

 gists the "antiijuity" of all mound relics is yet an open tjuestion, upon 

 which widely conflicting views are entertained. The "authenticity" of 

 the relics in ([uestion we consider fully established; but, reversing your 

 own ex|)ression, we cheerfully concede that the results of further mound 

 explorations will probably within a few years give evidence of great 

 weight for or against the "antitpiity" of the Daveni)ort ])ipes. Their 

 "authenticity" established, they certamly bear strong internal evidence 

 of great antiquity, and should it be established by other discoveries 

 that man and the mastodon were contemporary on this continent, 

 scientific skeptics will then have no further occasion to (question either 

 their authenticity or anti(|uity. 



