PROF. G. F. WRIGHT AND HIS CRITICS. 769 



elusions are not drawn, and the reader is cautioned against hasty 

 judgment. It is not easy to see how the scanty and fragmentary 

 evidence connecting man with the Ice age could have been more 

 fairly stated. Only six examples in all are given, and no case is 

 brought forward in whose favor a considerable mass of evidence 

 can not be quoted. None is new. They have been before the sci- 

 entific world and the general public more or less for several 

 years, and their evidence, pro and con, has been sifted and resif ted, 

 so that its value can now be fairly well estimated. And we are 

 audacious enough to believe that there are men as competent to 

 estimate it as any of the self-appointed judges who have taken on 

 themselves to sit in judgment on the author. Yet more, our 

 temerity goes so far as to lead us to prefer the calm and tem- 

 perate conclusions of such men to the contemptuous and almost 

 passionate utterances of others, learned and able we admit, but 

 evidently carried away by a common impulse or (we say it reluc- 

 tantly, but the facts irresistibly suggest it) acting under instruc- 

 tions which they can not resist. Their zeal has outrun their dis- 

 cretion. 



Coming down to details, we note that the critics are not always 

 agreed among themselves. One of them, a distinguished archae- 

 ologist,* admitting that " as a glacialist the author stands among 

 the first in the country," goes on to assert that the well-known 

 gravels at Trenton, N. J., where Dr. Abbott has been for years 

 finding very rude argillite implements, are of doubtful date and 

 <( require more study before we can assign their probable age." 

 But an equally distinguished geologist, " the head of the glacial 

 division of the United States Survey," says " the Trenton gravel is 

 strictly contemporaneous with the Belvidere moraine," thus mak- 

 ing it coeval with the greatest extension of the ice. Not even Dr. 

 Abbott himself has claimed a greater age for the gravels and 

 their contained implements than this ; and Prof. Wright is yet 

 more moderate in his estimates, assigning them to the later or 

 even to the last stages of the era of ice. Until, therefore, it is defi- 

 nitely proved that all the investigators are mistaken who believe 

 that they have really taken these implements from undisturbed 

 strata, we think our author is justified in his conclusions. 



If it would not be too presumptuous in an outsider, we would 

 remind the distinguished archaeologist that the whole problem is 

 not contained in the position of the tools. Other elements are 

 concerned, and it is not logical to insinuate a doubt concerning 

 one line of argument and to remain silent on all the rest, or to 

 quote his own negative experience against positive testimony. 



It would be tedious to dwell on the details of similar finds in 



* Science, October 28, 1892. 

 VOL. xlii. — 52 



