238 THE CHAIN OF LIFE. 



In what par, jf this sequence did man appear? In answer 

 to this, I think it is now generally admitted that he is not 

 certainly known earlier than the Post-glacial period. Various 

 supposed indications of his presence in " Inter-glacial " Glacial, 

 Pliocene, and even Miocene deposits have proved on examina- 

 tion to be unreliable. America has recently put forth claims 

 to have been inhabited by man in the Pliocene, on the faith 

 of remains found in auriferous gravels in the West. But the 

 facts that the implements and bones found are modern in 

 type, that the gravels were deeply mined by the Indians, 

 and that the objects found, as mortars for dressing gravel, etc., 

 are in many cases such as they would be likely to leave in their 

 excavations, have discredited these supposed discoveries. Still 

 more recently, chipped flints found in gravels in New Jersey, 

 by Abbott, have been supposed to carry back the Indians of 

 the East coast to the Glacial period. It is evident, however, from 

 the description of these deposits by the late Mr. Belt and by 

 Professor Cook, director of the Survey of New Jersey, that 

 they are really Post-glacial, that their age must be estimated 

 by study of the local conditions, and that there is no good 

 ground for correlating them with the upper members of the 

 true Glacial drift to the northwards, with which they had been 

 somewhat rashly identified. Irrespective of the doubtful 

 character of many if not all of the so-called implements, th'i 

 deposits in which they are found is confessedly not a product 

 of the ice of the Glacial period proper, whether that was, as 

 some maintain, a period of land glaciation as far south as New 

 Jersey or not. It belongs to a time of denudation by water, 

 aided perhaps by floating ice, and is not necessarily older than 

 the river gravels of the Somme, which, like it, contain boulders 

 and imply conditions of torrential action and climate which 

 have long since passed away. If, however, these imple- 

 ments are genuine, they would imply the presence of Palceo- 

 cosmic or Antediluvian man in America. This would in itself 

 be an important discovery. 



