780 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



us for reminding him (memory is sometimes inconvenient) of his 

 own words in 1888. His own views of palaeolithic man were then 

 as unsound as, according to him, are those of Prof. Wright to-day. 

 In this very magazine he wrote,* " Among the most recent and 

 satisfactory archa?ologic discoveries of this country are those of 

 two chipped implements of black flint found in Ohio by Dr. Metz 

 at Madisonville and Loveland, in deposits of loess and aqueo-gla- 

 cial gravel which G. F. Wright has shown to represent a closing 

 episode of the later Glacial epoch." Again, " Excluding all doubt- 

 ful cases, there remains a fairly consistent body of testimony indi- 

 cating the existence of a human population in North America dur- 

 ing the later Ice epoch." 



Much more might be quoted, but we will spare the feelings of 

 our critic. It is not fair to taunt a man with change of mind. 

 Every scientist should be open to conviction and therefore subject 

 to change. But we do look for a more tolerant spirit from one 

 who has so recently seen fit to change his own faith on an impor- 

 tant subject. He has been converted from the error of his ways, 

 and now looks down on his benighted brethren, not with pity, but 

 with feigned contempt. We would fain know the causes of his 

 conversion, but forbear to speculate, and will rather believe that 

 his logical mind has yielded to arguments which he could not re- 

 sist and which bade him destroy a faith which once he preached. 

 Possibly the evidence derived from the new science of (xee-oniorphy 

 has been largely instrumental in working this transformation. 



We will not repeat what we have already said about the diver- 

 gent views on the nature of the Ice age, further than to remark 

 for the benefit of this critic that Whewell's wise saw above quoted 

 may be recalled with advantage here. 



Nor will we further follow this extraordinary effusion. Most 

 of its charges have been made by others in less offensive terms and 

 already noticed in this paper. Suffice it to say that we find it hard 

 to comprehend how a scientist could allow his better judgment to 

 be so far entirely overridden. No surer indication of a bad case 

 can be given than " calling names," and next time he enters the 

 arena we advise our indignant champion to submit to the careful 

 search of some calm and judicious friend who will see to it that 

 he carries into the field no unknightly weapons concealed about 

 his person — in other words, that he request a friend to aid him in 

 confining his exuberance of language within due bounds by the 

 expurgation of such idiosyncratic terms as " egotistical," " incom- 

 petent," " shyster," " dupe," " knave," " harpy," " betinseled char- 

 latan," with others of a similar nature which are not usually found 

 in the current vocabulary of his scientific co-workers. 



* Popular Science Monthly, January, 1888. 



