270 



THE AURIFEROUS GRAVELS OF THE SIERRA NEVADA. 





Immediately after visiting the locality a notice of the discovery was presented to the California 

 Academy of Sciences, at a meeting held July 16, I860.* The debris in which the skull was im- 

 bedded were not, however, removed, nor any chemical examination made of it, until some two 

 years later, after it had been taken to Cambridge. The supposed discovery created considerable 

 interest, and was generally looked upon with great suspicion. It has hardly received any notice in 

 Europe. The religious press in this country took the matter up, however, and were quite unanimous 

 in declaring the Calaveras skull to be " a hoax." One of the editors of " The Pacific," a so-called 

 religious newspaper published at San Francisco, hastened to visit the locality, and " interviewed " 

 the different persons through whoso hands the skull passed, received — apparently - — almost, if 

 not quite, exactly the same statements from them which had previously been given to the writer 

 by the same men, and then returned to San Francisco and wrote and published the following : 

 " Strange memory this, we thought, to retain such minute particulars of such a supposed unimpor- 

 tant discovery, two years before. Then, to have it [by it, the skull appears to be meant] pass 

 through all these hands, and varied operations, till it came out a skull of most ancient days. 

 Certainly, it looks laughably suspicious of a regular hoax, got up as a fine California joke upon our 

 State Geologist. California miners have always, as a class, had a low estimate of Eastern geolo- 

 gists who have attempted to show their wisdom by the raid on our mining regions, and they 

 would much enjoy a joke like this on one in high position. We believe the whole story worthy 

 of no scientific credence, and are also more fully established in this belief by the declaration of 

 an able Congregational ist minister, who has preached some time in the region, and who told us 

 that the miners freely told him that they purposely got up the whole affair as a joko on Professor 



Whitney." t 



Ey the time this valuable information reached Boston it had become much more precise and 

 authentic ; for, — as may be learned from the " Congregationalist," % — " Once more, we have the 

 1 highly developed ' Calaveras skull, found in a shaft 150 feet under the volcanic deposits of Cali- 

 fornia, where it had been placed by some mischievous miners as a hoax upon one of their own 

 number, who was of an anti-Scriptural and geologic turn of mind. He swallowed the hoax, and 

 carried the news to Professor Whitney, who thereupon secured the skull for the State Museum, 

 and introduced the world to the oldest man yet known, a man of the Pleioeene period. The writer 

 lias the facts of this case from a clergyman of the Pacific coast, whose brother was a party in the 

 affair by which Professor Whitney was led to a conclusion to which, as far as we are aware, he 

 still adheres. The facts, we believe, are capable of being proved beyond all question. We do 

 not want to press these scientific sores unduly. But when we remember that they are specimens 

 from almost innumerable conclusions that a certain class of scientists have always been eager to 

 draw, if they could be made to bear against the Bible, we have a right to hesitate before accept- 

 ing their present equally confident conclusions ; possibly to suggest a reasonable modesty in the 

 future assertions of those who have made such egregious mistakes in the past." § Similar articles 

 were published in many other religious newspapers, and the cause of the unwillingness to believe 

 in Mr. Mattison's statements is, in such cases, easily to be understood. 



A decidedly more amusing solution of the problem presented by the Calaveras skull was offered 

 soon after its discovery by Bret Ilarte, whose poem, entitled "The Pliocene Skull," went the 

 rounds of all the newspapers and made the name of Calaveras classic. It remained, however, for a 

 French writer to put a finishing touch on the absurdities to which this discovery has given rise. 

 Mr. L. Simonin, in the Revue des Deux Mondes, || accepting Bret Harte's "But I 'd take it kindly 



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* Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences, Vol. III. p. 277. 

 t The Pacific, Vol. XVIII. No. 48. 

 X See number of September 27, 1876. 



§ This article stands under the name of " Professor T. S. Child*, D. I)., Hartford, Ct." 



|| Vol. XII. (Troisieme Serie) p. 288. This gentleman is the same one previously mentioned (see ante, 



p. 35) as having done his best to bemuddle the question of the geological age of the auriferous slates of 



the Sierra Nevada. 





