PALEOLITHIC MAN IN AMERICA. 27 



relic-bearing deposits of central France ; but, as shown in the ac- 

 companying table, the records are not accordant in their entirety, 

 and can only be reduced to common terms by juxtaposing the 

 earliest recognized Quaternary episode of the lowlands with one 

 of the episodes of the later Quaternary in the mountains. This 

 allocation harmonizes the evidence as to the antiquity of man on 

 opposite sides of the Atlantic, but runs counter to current opinion 

 and appears inconsistent with certain cavern phenomena, and can 

 therefore be set forth as only a possible one. In this as in other 

 cases, paleontologic correlation is incompetent if not utterly 

 meaningless, since the episodes dealt with were so brief that 

 chorologic diversity among the higher animals was unquestion- 

 ably more important than chronologic variation — indeed, the latest 

 lacustral (and relic-bearing) deposits of the Great Basin, which are 

 referred to the Pliocene upon paleontologic grounds,* appear to 

 have an older facies than the oldest relic-bearing river-deposits of 

 France. 



11. 

 The chipped implements found by Aughey appear to have 

 been dropped on the bottom of the shallow lake or muddy swamp 

 within which the loess was accumulated ; since the loess itself con- 

 sists of glacial mud, and since the basin in which it was deposited 

 was bounded on the north by the Quaternary mer de glace, the cli- 

 mate must have been cold; and the associated elephantine re- 

 mains prove the association of man and mammoth. The relics 

 themselves throw little light upon the habits of their makers, but 

 suggest that they were well advanced in the fabrication of chipped 

 implements. If the obsidian implement from the Nevada lake- 

 beds was really in situ (as all appearances indicated), it must have 

 been dropped in a shallow and quiet bay of the saline and alkaline 

 lake Lahontan, and gradually buried beneath its fine mechanical 

 sediments and chemical precipitates ; as indicated by the asso- 

 ciated fossil bones and teeth, its makers must have been contem- 

 porary with the indigenous horse, an elk or deer, an elephant or 

 mastodon, the camel, a gigantic ox, and other extinct animals com- 

 monly referred to the later Pliocene ; but the single implement 

 tells little of the habits and customs of the people it rejjresents, 

 save that they had advanced far in the art of stone-chipping. Gil- 

 bert's hearth was located on the southern shore of Lake Ontario, 

 when it was greatly expanded by continental tilting and obstruc- 

 tion of its present outlet by the later Quaternary glacier, and was 

 buried beneath lacustral deposits when further tilting of the land 

 altered the position of the lake-shore ; and since the lake was con- 

 fined on the north and east by the wer de glace, the temperature of 

 the times must have been low and the surface of the water dotted 



* "American Naturalist," xxi, ISST, pp. 458, 459. 



