THE EVOLUTION OF MAN 85 



in the open, the chances of so shrewd a creature being caught in 

 the flood waters and thus buried in sediment were not very great. 

 However we account for it, the fact remains that relics of ancient man 

 are rare and are valued accordingly. 



In North America. -Repeated instances of seemingly ancient 

 man have been brought to light in North America, such as the "Cale- 

 veras skull" of the California gold-bearing gravels, which was satirized 

 by Bret Harte; the Nebraska "Loess man," and those of the Trenton 

 gravels; none of which, with the possible exception of the last-men- 

 tioned, has proved to be really old in the geologic sense. Indirect 

 evidence of human antiquity, that is, the association of North Ameri- 

 can man with animals which are now extinct, while very rare, has been 

 reported in at least two highly authentic instances. The first of these 

 was at Attica, New York, and is attested by Doctor John M. Clarke, 

 the New York state geologist. Four feet below the surface of the 

 ground, in a black muck, he found the bones of the mastodon (Masto- 

 don americanus) , and 12 inches below this, in undisturbed clay, pieces 

 of pottery and thirty fragments of charcoal. The charcoal may have 

 been of natural origin, but the presence of the pottery seems conclu- 

 sive. The other instance was that of the remains of a herd of extinct 

 bison (Bison antiquus) found near Smoky Hill River, Logan County, 

 Kansas, and thus described by Professor Williston: An "arrow-head 

 was found underneath the right scapula of the largest skeleton, 

 embedded in the matrix, but touching the bone itself. The skeleton 



was lying upon the right side The bone bed when cleared off 



.... contained the skeletons of five or six adult animals, and two or 

 three younger ones, together with a foetal skeleton within the pelvis 

 of one of the adult skeletons. The animals had evidently all perished 

 together, during the winter. There was no possibility of the accidental 



intrusion of the arrow-head in the place where found It must 



have been within the body of the animal at the time of death, or have 

 been lying on the surface beneath its body." 



What at this writing is claimed to be another genuine case of such 

 an association, this time of the actual human bones, has just been 

 announced from Florida. This find, which has been reported by 

 State Geologist Sellards, was made at Vero, eastern Florida, in 1913. 

 The fossil human bones are from two incomplete skeletons and are 

 found in strata which also contain remains of the following extinct 

 species: Elephas columbi, Equus leidyi, a fox, a deer, the ground-sloth, 

 Megalonyx jeffersoni, and the American mastodon. 



