TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 901 



geological period finding on the Pampas the body of a glyptodon, scooping out its 

 flesh, setting up its carapace on the ground like a monstrous dish-cover, and digging 

 himself a burrow to live in underneath this animal roof ; but geologists have not 

 accepted the account. Even in the case of so well-known an explorer as the late 

 Dr. Lund, opinions are still divided as to whether his human skulls from the 

 caves of Brazil are really contemporary with the bones of megatherium and fossil 

 horse. One of the latest judgments has been favourable; Quatrefages not only 

 looks upon the cave-skulls as of high antiquity, but regards their owners as repre- 

 senting the ancestors of the living Indians. The high and narrow dimensions of 

 the ancient and modern skulls are given in the ' Crania Ethnica,' and whatever a 

 similarity of proportions between them may prove, it certainly exists. Dr. Koch's 

 celebrated flint arrow-head, recorded to have been found under the leg-bones of a 

 mastodon in Missouri, is still to be seen, and has all the appearance of a modern 

 Indian weapon, which raises doubt of its being really of the mastodon period. 

 This antecedent improbability of remote geological age is felt still more strongly to 

 attach to the stone pestles and mortars, &c, brought forward by Mr. J. D. 

 "Whitney, of the California Geological Survey, as found by miners in the gold- 

 bearing gravels. On the one hand, these elaborate articles of stone-work are the 

 very characteristic objects of the Indian graves of the district, and on the other the 

 theory that the auriferous gravels capped by lava-flows are of tertiary age is 

 absolutely denied by geologists such as M. Jules Marcou in his article on ' The 

 Geology of California' {Bull. Soc. Geol. de France, 1883). It is to be hoped 

 that the Section may have the opportunity of discussing Dr. C. C. Abbott's imple- 

 ments from Trenton, New Jersey. The turtle-back celts, as they are called from 

 their flat and convex sides, are rudely chipped from pebbles of the hard argillite 

 out of the boulder-bed, but the question is as to the position of the sand and gravel 

 in which they are found in the bluffs high above the present Delaware River. 

 The first opinion come to, that the makers of the implements inhabited America 

 not merely after but during the great Ice Age, has been modified by further 

 examination, especially by the report of Mr. H. Carvill Lewis, who considers the 

 implement-bearing bed not to have been deposited by a river which flowed 

 over tbe top of the boulder-bed, but that at a later period than this would 

 involve, the Delaware had cut a channel through the boulder-bed, and that a sub- 

 sequent glacier-flood threw down sand and gravel in this cutting at a considerable 

 height above the existing river, burying therein the rude stone implements of an 

 Esquimaux race then inhabiting the country. Belt, Wilson, and Putnam have 

 written on this question, which I will not pursue further, except by pointing out 

 that the evidence from the bluffs of the Delaware must not be taken by itself, but 

 in connection with that from the terraces high above the James River, near Rich- 

 mond, where Mr. C. M. Wallace has likewise reported the finding of rude stone 

 instruments, to which must be added other finds from Guanajuato, Rio Juchipila, 

 and other Mexican localities. 



This leads at once into the interesting argument how far any existing people 

 are the descendants and representatives of man of the post-Glacial period. The 

 problem whether the present Esquimaux are such a remnant of an early race is 

 one which Professor Boyd Dawkins has long worked at, and will, I trust, bring 

 forward with full detail in this appropriate place. Since he stated this view in 

 his work on ' Cave-Hunting ' it has continually been cited, whether by way of 

 affirmation or denial, but always with that gain to the subject which arises from a 

 theory based on distinct facts. May I take occasion here to mention as preliminary 

 the question, Were the natives met with by the Scandinavian seafarers of the 

 eleventh century Esquimaux, and whereabouts on the coast where they actually 

 found? It may be to Canadians a curious subject of contemplation how about 

 that time of history Scandinavia stretched out its hands at once to their old and 

 their new home. When the race of bold sea-rovers who ruled Normandy and 

 invaded England turned their prows into the northern and western sea, they passed 

 from Iceland to yet more inclement Greenland, and thence, according to Icelandic 

 records, which are too consistent to be refused belief as to main facts, they sailed 

 some way down the American coast. But where are we to look for the most 



