Review of Recent Geological Literature. 351 
regions. Indeed, he deduces the presumed traits of the former from the 
well known traits of the latter, and does not make it clear in what respects 
the two dynasties differ from each other, yet he maintains that "there 
was a Mound Builders' age in this country, and that it is as distinctive 
as was the neolithic age in Europe". The neolithic age in America he 
considers to have been distinctively the Mound Builders' age. All pre- 
historic structures and mining, whether of copper, salt, steatite, mica, 
pipestone and oil wells, all workshops and stone cairns, walled towns, 
roadways and shell heaps were of Neolithic Mound Builders, who had a 
more varied and advanced culture than the Cliff Dwellers. They "fol- 
lowed hard on to the paleolithic people," but may have been separated 
from them by a conjectural age occupied by the Mastodon and Mam- 
moth, or the Mastodon's age. The author is inclined to regard this 
(latter) age as linked close^ly with the Mound Builders, and for this he 
relies on sundry effigies and carved pipes that have the forms of the 
Mastodon. The elephant pipe of the Davenport Academy of Sciences 
has now sufficient confirmatory later discoveries to support it, but the 
tablets containing apparently Hebrew characters are thought to have 
originated from the Mormons who once dwelt along the Mississippi 
bluffs in Illinois. 
The Mound Builders knew the Mastodon and they seem to have ex- 
tended also to the time of the Buffalo, for the bones of both, or at least 
their effigies, are well known in connection with their structures. They 
were sun-worshipers, and the symbols of their religion are seen in the 
pyramid, the square and the circle which prevail. Their foes sur- 
rounded them and they built defenses. These foes were the ancestors 
of the red Indians. The "stone-grave races," which occupied central 
Tennessee, are regarded as a division of the Mound Builders. They 
survived to near the beginning of history, when they seem to have been 
expelled by some hostile tribes allied to the red Indians, who preempted 
their sites. 
In the discussion of the migrations of the Mound Builders the author 
shows their very close alliance, and almost an identity with some of the 
early Indian tribes, that is, while stating the evidence of such migra- 
tions he draws it wholly from what is known of Indian tradition con- 
cerning themselves, and of statements from early historians. The au- 
thor, however, considers it absurd to conclude that the Indians, for in- 
stance the Cherokees or the Dakotas, were the Mound Builders or were 
descended from them. Yet he gives, in the chapter on the "pyramidal 
mounds," the most conclusive evidence that De Soto saw the Actual 
Mound Builders, in the form of Indians, inhabiting these walled towns, 
and putting to their various uses the different structures of the villages. 
Through the volume, at least in its earlier chapters, are scattered fre- 
quent assertions that the Mound Builders were a distinct race, main- 
taining a distinct dynasty, but driven out by a hostile inroad of less cul- 
tured tribes from the north or northeast. There is, however, a pro- 
gressive modification of this idea, apparently the result of continued re- 
search by the author. It is due, perhaps, to the method of partial pub- 
