AUEIFEROUS GRAYP:L MAN IN CALIFORNIA. 421 



Whitney's researches and conclusions. 



Professor Whitney found that the gold-bearing gravel deposits 

 were, in the main, very old; that their formation ])egan at least in 

 Middle Tertiary time and continued down to the end of the Plio«ene 

 period, and. in fact, in varying degree down to the present time. 

 Examining the evidence with the utmost care, he found it impossi])le 

 to avoid the conclusion that manv of the relics of man and his arts 

 came from those portions of the gravels that could with reasonable 

 certainty be assigned to the Pliocene; that these finds were associated 

 with the remains of extinct species of animals and plants; that they 

 represented a race of ordinary physical characters, though ha\ing a 

 culture of the lowest range compatible with the human status. He 

 pointed out that a prominent feature of the evidence was its coherency; 

 coming from a multitude of independent sources and from widely dis- 

 tributed localities, it all pointed in one direction. There was no sug- 

 gestion of the manufacture of evidence and no apparent motive for 

 deception. The observations were all those of miners, but a "long 

 chain of circumstantial evidence is frequently more convincing than a 

 single statement of an [expert] eyewitness."^ Since AVhitney's time 

 the evidence has been strengthened b}^ Becker, and especially ])y his 

 statement that Mr. Clarence King, director of the Survey of the For- 

 tieth Parallel, found part of a stone pestle in the firmly compacted 

 tufaccous deposits under the lava cap of Tuolumne table mountain 

 and removed it from the matrix with his own hands. 



It is impossible not to be deeply impressed by the amount and con- 

 sistent nature of the evidence presented ; yet such is the magnitude 

 of the proposition to be sustained that even this testimony seems inade- 

 quate, and we seek b}' reexamination and renewed research to deter- 

 mine its exact strength and true significance. 



age of the auriferous gravels. 



The substantial correctness of the geologic determinations of Whit- 

 ney has recently been made fully apparent by researches of the able 

 geologists of the United States Geological Survey. It was expected by 

 many students of the subject that the relic-bearing gravels would in 

 time prove to be younger than Whitney believed; that they would he 

 found to correspond in age with the Glacial period — possibly with the 

 closing episodes of that period as determined in the Eastern States — and 

 others were confident that they would prove to be even post-Glaeial; but 

 instead of this, Becker, Lindgrin, Turner, and Diller have extended 

 the gravel-forming epoch to cover the Miocene and probably the 

 greater part of the Eocene, thus making comparisons with the close of 

 the Glacial period hardly more reasonable than the attempt to include 

 the whole group of phenomena within the period of Biblical record. 



' Auriferous Gravels, p. 260. 



