n8 The Life and Writings of 



racy of his facts, time has developed value for these 

 observations, if they only have served to indicate to 

 more observing minds and to more skillful surveyors 

 the locations of new and important prehistoric works. 

 With the location of certain now well-known ancient 

 monuments, and with their fair delineation, the really 

 valuable portion of Rafinesque s archseologic work may 

 be said to end. The extensive memoirs which he pro 

 jected, and some of which he partially executed and 

 published, possess very little archseologic value indeed. 

 It is quite clear that Rafinesque was not well equipped 

 for investigations of this sort. The opportunity to let 

 the imagination run riot, because there is so little check 

 of real fact in certain lines of ethnologic investigation, 

 afforded to him the means of attempting some of the 

 wildest vagaries. His ideas were not checked by facts 

 but proceeded along lines which were impossible of dem 

 onstration. It would be hard to find a more valueless 

 and unscientific treatment of ethnologic questions than 

 that in his &quot;Ancient Annals of Kentucky&quot;, in Marshall s 

 History, or those found in his &quot;American Nations etc&quot;, 

 if, indeed, one except the works of John Haywood and 

 Josiah Priest! One of the shorter papers of Rafinesque, 

 published in the Cincinnati Literary Gazette, the &quot;Biog 

 raphy of the American Solomon&quot;,* called forth a severe 



*The Cincinnati Literary Gazette, No. 22, May 29, p. 170, 1824. 



