PLEISTOCP]NE FOSSILS. OQo. 



^oo 



museums in the world. The evidence of age was not, 

 however, satisfactory in a geological point of view, and 

 Holmes, with the aid of a deep excavation made for a city 

 sewer, has shown that the supposed imi)Iements do not 

 belong to the undisturbed gravel, but merely to a talus of 

 loose debris lying against it, and to which modern Indians 

 resorted to find material for implements, and left behind 

 them rejected or unfinished pieces. This alleged dis- 

 covery has therefore no geological or anthropological 

 significance. The same acute and industrious observer 

 has incjuired into a number of similar cases in different 

 parts of the United States, and finds all iiable to objec- 

 tions on the above grounds, except in a few cases wdien 

 the alleged implements are probably not artificial. These 

 observations not only dispose, for the present it least, of 

 palieolithic man in America, but they suggest the propriety 

 of a revision of the whole doctrine of " pala-olithic " and 

 " neolithic " implements as held in Great Britain and 

 elsewhere. Such distinctions are often founded on forms 

 which may ([uite as well represent merely local or tem- 

 porary exigencies, or the debris of old workshops, as any 

 dift'erence of time or culture. All this I reasoned out 

 many years ago on the basis of American analogies, but 

 the Lyellian doctrine of modern causes as explaining 

 ancient facts seems as yet to have too little place in the 

 scienq'e of Anthropology. It may be added that Wright, 

 in recent papers, attempts to defend some of the " pali-.o- 

 lithic " finds against Holmes's criticisms ; and a somewhat 

 active controversy is still in progress. The evidence, 

 however, for the Pleistocene age of any of the genuine 

 implements seems too uncertain to be accepted at present. 

 All that can be affirmed is that there is a certain proba- 



