Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 4.djvu/129

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LITERARY NOTICES.
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from that of science; one deals with rules and rote, and the other with principles; one narrows, the other widens; one makes of a student a good machine, the other an educated thinker. Mr. Folsom's book-keeping is to be commended on broad educational grounds, as it presents the subject in its logical and scientific form, suitable for liberal mental training. The difficulty with book-keeping, as with arithmetic, is that, under pressure of the utilitarian spirit, they are degraded into mere blind mechanical operations, acquired as a kind of dexterity, and solely with a view to business. Bookkeeping is commonly learned in much the same way as the management of the sewing-machine, and to little better purpose, so far as mental cultivation is concerned. Mr. Folsom aims to redeem the study to its higher uses by treating it as a science of values and exchanges, which depends upon reasons and laws. While making due provision for the practice of the art, his constant method is to keep in view the principles which should guide the student's thinking. A work like this, pursued thoughtfully and thoroughly, in its philosophic spirit, will afford the most valuable preparation for studying the science of political economy, which treats of the laws of value and exchange as affecting communities and nations on the largest scale.

Antiquities of the Southern Indians, particularly of the Georgia Tribes. By Charles C. Jones, Jr. Large octavo, 532 pages, illustrated with Thirty-one Plates, and several Woodcuts. Price $6.00. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1873.

we have before briefly noticed this valuable contribution to American archæology, and now proceed to give our readers a further account of it, as, since the publication of the "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley," no work has been written upon this subject so minute in its details, so careful in statement, and so extended in its observations. Although the antiquities of Georgia claim the author's particular attention, he presents an intelligent and comprehensive view of the ancient monuments and aboriginal relics of that portion of the territory of the United States which is bounded on the north by Kentucky and the upper limits of Virginia, on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, on the south by the Gulf of Mexico, and on the west by the Mississippi River. The field of research—which is manifestly one of great interest, abounding with relics of unusual variety, symmetry, and beauty—has hitherto been but feebly explored. Here, in ancient times, dwelt peoples who apparently occupied a middle position in the scale of semi-civilization; influenced, on the one hand, to a greater or less degree, by those ideas which in Mexico and Central America culminated in such complex and elaborate developments, and, on the other, sympathizing with and sharing in those ruder expressions characteristic of Western hunter tribes and their more northern neighbors.

"Our object has been," says the author in his preface, "from the earliest and most authentic sources of information at command, to convey a correct impression of the location, characteristics, form of government, social relations, manufactures, domestic economy, diversions, and customs of the Southern Indians, at the time of primal contact between them and the Europeans. This introductory part of the work is followed by an examination of tumuli, earthworks, and various relics, obtained from burial-mounds, gathered amid refuse-piles, found in ancient graves, and picked up in cultivated fields and on the sites of old villages and fishing-resorts. Whenever these could be interpreted in the light of early-recorded observations, or were capable of explanation by customs not obsolete at the dawn of the historic period, the authorities relied upon have been carefully noted."

In the first four chapters we are made acquainted with the political, social, and industrial status of the Southern Indians, as disclosed by the narratives of the Spanish expeditions, and portrayed in the accounts of the early voyagers. The five succeeding chapters are devoted to a history of mound-building, and to a description of various groups of mounds with their attendant inclosures and fish-preserves. Among these ancient tumuli, antedating the period of European colonization, are mentioned and classified temple-mounds, terraced mounds, truncated pyramids, mounds of observation and retreat, chieftain-mounds, family or