BOOK NOTICES. 443 
BOOK NOTICES. 
The Mounds of the Mississippi Valley, Historically Considered. By 
Lucien Carr. Quarto, pp. io6. 
This essay is reprinted from the second volume of the " Memoirs of the 
Kentucky Geological Survey," and is divided into three chapters, with an intro- 
duction, viz : The Indian as an Agriculturist ; The Indian as a Worshiper of 
the Sun, and The Indian as a Mound-Builder. The object of the paper is to 
show that, " admitting all that can be reasonably claimed by the most enthusiastic 
advocate of the superior civilization of the Mound-Builders, there is no reason 
why the red Indians of the Mississippi Valley, judging from what we know, his- 
torically, of their development, could not have thrown up these works." 
Taking up the usual argument that the Indians were hunters and hence 
migratory in their habits, not remaining long enough in one locality to erect 
such immense works as are found in some portions of the United States, the 
author devotes a chapter to showing successfully by an extended array of proofs, 
derived from numerous reHable sources, that they were an agricultural people, 
cultivating vast crops of corn and other edibles, and that contrary to the usual 
idea, they were a settled people and had an abundance of time to devote to such 
■structures. 
To the argument that the Mound-Builders were sun-worshipers, and hence 
of a different race from the red Indian of modern times, he opposes a chapter of 
indubitable proofs that even to a very recent period all the tribes of Indians were 
given to the same form of worship. 
In his final chapter Mr. Carr shows that all North American tribes have been 
mound-builders and that it was comparatively easy, even with the primitive tools and 
baskets used in excavating and transporting the earth used in their construction, 
for these Indians to have erected any of the mounds yet discovered in the Missis- 
sippi Valley. As he says in conclusion, "Summing up the results that have been 
attained, it may be safely said that so'far from there being an a priori xqz.'&ow why 
the red Indians could not have erected these works, the evidence shows conclu- 
sively that in New York and the Gulf States they did build mounds and embank- 
ments that are essentially of the same character as those found in Ohio," "and 
that one of the more elaborate of them, viz: the mound at Circleville, in which 
were found articles of iron and silver, was built after contact with the whites, and 
therefore by recent Indians." He further claims "in view of these results and 
of the additional fact that these same Indians are the only people, except the 
whites, so far as we know, who have ever held the region over which these works 
.are scattered," that the mounds and inclosure of Ohio, like those in New York 
