194 General Notes. [ February, 
Now it is not a question of argument, but one of things. It is 
‘an easy matter to place things side by side, and there would be 
no question whatever of the superiority of mound-builders’ work 
over that of every tribe known in historic times any where near 
the area occupied by them. 
The pipes and other objects in hard stone should be compared 
not with pipes in catlinite and soapstone, but with objects in the 
same material. 
The same is true of pottery. If we select from any or every 
collection the best evidences of form and finish and place by the 
side of them the best specimens of modern work by any tribe east 
of the Mississippi river there is a hopeless falling off. 
Now it is but fair to infer that the people who so skilfully 
wrought in the hardest quartz, who made pottery in every way 
equal to that of the Pueblos, were not in the same grade as the 
tented savages whom our ancestors found upon our territory. 
ut the great, complicated earthworks of the mound-builders, 
so faithfully examined and reported by the old explorers, furnish 
the most important evidence of their superiority to their successors. 
It is true the southern Indians built mounds; but does any one 
seriously compare the works of the Natchez and Muskoki tribes 
with those of the mound-builders ? The Iroquois made stockades 
and enclosures, and Mr. Morgan argued thence the works in Ohio 
were precisely similar in function. But this opinion cannot stand. 
In conclusion, we desire to emphasize the importance of that 
pioneer work, so extended and so valuable to science. There 
are not many examples of such unselfish devotion. More than 
one hundred mounds were carefully opened, their contents gathered 
and arranged, over five hundred embankments and fortifications 
visited and surveyed in five States, the expense being borne 
by Dr. Davis. The magnitude and completeness of all this can 
only be appreciated by examination of “ Ancient Monuments,” an 
of the treasures collected, now in Blackmore Museum, London.— 
J. B. Holder. 
AN IMPORTANT CONTRIBUTION TO CALIFORNIAN FoLK-LORE, lin- 
guistics and tribal topography is contained in the Bulletin of the 
ex Institute of Salem, Mass. Nos. 1-3 of Vol. xvir (1885), 
pp- 33, and one plate. The author, Hugo Ried, wrote a series 0 
letters from San Gabriel Mission to Mr. Coronel of Los Angeles, 
in 1852, concerning the Indians among whom he lived at the 
mission buildings. Twelve of these letters were published by 
Dr. W. J. Hoffman in the above periodical, together with copious 
notes of his own and drawings of the implements described in 
the letters. The subjects referred to are births, burials, food, 
medicine, diseases, sports and games, myths and legends, etc., all 
of which form interesting parallels to Father Boscana’s Chirig- 
chinich (in Robinson's Life in California, 1846). The first letter 
gives the Indian equivalents to the names of towns, harbors and 
