Editorials. 



The publication of Professor Wright's Ma7i and the Glacial 

 Period has been the occasion of much discussion concerning 

 some of the questions with which the book deals. The numerous 

 and somewhat elaborate reviews have criticized adversely many 

 points in the volume ; and in spite of the fact that Professor 

 Wright has responded to most of the reviews, and in spite of the 

 fact that both reviews and responses have been reviewed with 

 loud professions of disinterested impartiality, it can hardly be 

 claimed that any specific criticism of the book has been really 

 met. The errors which have been pointed out, some of them 

 trivial, many of them fundamental, still remain. The unjust 

 claims and the misrepresentations of the volume deserved the 

 measure of criticism they have received. 



It was especially the author's handling of the evidence con- 

 cerning the sequence of events in the glacial period, and 

 concerning man's antiquity in terms of geology, which occasioned 

 the somewhat prolonged discussion. Professor Wright is cer- 

 tainly entitled to his opinion on both these questions, as on all 

 others. So far as we know, this right has not been disputed. 

 The point of criticism at the outset was that the author did not 

 fairly represent the present state of scientific opinion on these 

 two questions, in a book which especially professed to set forth 

 the present status of the problems with which it dealt. The 

 justice of the criticisms made on this basis can not be questioned. 

 The attitude of the reviewers, or at any rate the attitude of those 

 who called forth the discussion, was not so much that there were 

 two or more glacial epochs, though they indicated that this was 

 their belief, as that the author had failed to adequately present 

 the evidence bearing on the question, and had left the discus- 

 sion on this point in such shape as to mislead the public, for 



