206 FOSSIL MEN. 



as evidence of this early race, would go to show a 

 degree of culture equal to that of the more civilized 

 modern tribes. Of this kind are the beautiful polished 

 plummet or ornament, and polished spear heads, found 

 in the California auriferous gravel at great depths, and 

 the baskets and pottery described by Hilgard and 

 Fontaine from the salt-beds of Petite Anse. To the 

 same effect is the fact stated by Professor Wyman, 

 that the Calaveras skull from the gravels of California 

 is of the ordinary American type, and rather larger in 

 cranial capacity than those of the modern Indians of 

 the same region. Still, the probability is that all 

 these remains are of somewhat modern date.* This 

 applies, for example, to the discovery in California of 

 polished implements and stone mortars in the auriferous 

 gravels, which also contain bones of the mastodon. 

 Some of these objects are stated to have been found 

 at depths exceeding 300 feet in gravel, capped by 

 beds of lava and tufa, and attributed to the Pliocene 

 age. They would go to prove that the " polished 

 stone age " had been established in California at that 

 somewhat early Tertiary period. Unfortunately, how- 

 ever, they occur in deposits known to have been 

 worked by the Mexicans for gold, and in which deep 

 shafts of ancient date have been found, and as the 

 mortars and other objects are those likely to have been 

 used in the search for gold, this would seem to afford 

 the most probable explanation of their presence. In 

 the more northern part of America no remains what- 

 * Whitney's Memoir (1879) must be noticed in an appendix. 



