vni THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN NORTH AMERICA 449 



link " is a reproach to the doctrine of evolution ; yet with 

 strange inconsistency they refuse to accept evidence which in 

 the case of any extinct or living animal, other than man, would 

 be at least provisionally held to be sufficient, but follow in the 

 very footsteps of those who blindly refused even to examine 

 into the evidence adduced by the earlier discoverers of the 

 antiquity of man, and thus play into the hands of those who 

 can adduce his recent origin and unchangeability as an argu- 

 ment against the descent of man from the lower animals. 

 Believing that the whole bearing of the comparative anatomy 

 of man and of the anthropoid apes, together with the absence 

 of indications of any essential change in his structure during 

 the quaternary period, lead to the conclusion that he must 

 have existed, as man, in Pliocene times, and that the inter- 

 mediate forms connecting him with the higher apes probably 

 lived during the early Pliocene or the Miocene period, it is 

 urged that all such discoveries as those described in the 

 present article are in themselves probable and such as we have 

 a right to expect. If this be the case, the proper way to treat 

 evidence as to man's antiquity is to place it on record, and 

 admit it provisionally wherever it would be held adequate 

 in the case of other animals ; not, as is too often now the case, 

 ignore it as unworthy of acceptance or subject its discoverers 

 to indiscriminate accusations of being either impostors them- 

 selves or the victims of impostors. Error is sure to be soon 

 detected, and its very detection is often a valuable lesson. 

 But facts once rejected are apt to remain long buried in 

 obscurity, and their non-recognition may often act as a check 

 to further progress. It is in the hope of inducing a more 

 healthy public opinion on this interesting and scientifically 

 important question that this brief record of the evidences of 

 man's antiquity in North America has been compiled. 



2a 



