Constantine Samuel Rafinesque. 117 



preface of that rare and valuable volume may be noted 

 the following remark: 



&quot; It will be observed that several plans and notices of ancient 

 works are presented in the succeeding chapters, upon the authority 

 of the late Prof. C. S. Rafinesque. This gentleman, while living, 

 devoted considerable attention to the antiquities of the Mississippi 

 valley, and published several brief papers relating to them. His 

 notes and plans, for the most part brief, crude, and imperfect, at 

 his death found their way into the possession of Brantz Mayer, 

 Esqr., of Baltimore, late Secretary of the American L/egation to 

 Mexico. . . . His notes are principally important, as indicating the 

 localities of many interesting monuments, rather than as conveying 

 any satisfactory information concerning them.&quot; 



It is difficult properly to characterize this critique 

 of the work of Rafinesque without doing an uninten 

 tional injustice to the memory of the distinguished 

 authors of the &quot;Ancient Monuments,&quot; but it hardly 

 appears to do Rafinesque full justice. It does not rec 

 ognize the fact of his inexperience in studies of this 

 character, nor does it consider that this branch of inves 

 tigation was very far from being reduced to a scientific 

 method in his day. It fails to measure his work by 

 the standards of his time and the status of his subject, 

 but applies modern methods of criticism. His notes 

 may have been brief, his work crude, his deductions 

 not always sound, his information not always complete; 

 granted all these, yet time has shown the essential accu- 



