EDITORIALS. 1 99 



whom the book was professedly written, concerning the real 

 condition of scientific opinion. The attitude of the reviewers 

 who first criticized the work was not that glacial man did not 

 exist, but that the author had failed to represent the present 

 state of scientific opinion on this question, and that existing 

 evidence does not, in the minds of many competent observers, 

 bear out the conclusion which Professor Wright advances, and 

 which he advances as if it were not open to question. Instead 

 of answering or attempting to answer the criticisms passed on 

 the book, the responses to the reviews, and the reviews of the 

 reviews have diverted, or attempted to divert, attention from the 

 real criticisms, to other matters. They have shifted, or attempted 

 to shift, the discussion from the presentation of the above questions 

 in the volume under review, to the merits of the questions them- 

 selves. Shifted to this basis, the questions at issue are very 

 different from those first raised, and may continue to be discussed 

 long after Man and the Glacial Period has ceased to attract 

 attention. 



If the discussion is not at an end, it is presumably near it. 

 Incidentally, two questions which had previously been clearly 

 recognized and sharply emphasized by specialists have been 

 brought into greater popular prominence than heretofore. The 

 one question concerns the simplicity versus the complexity of 

 the glacial period. The other concerns the nature of the evi- 

 dence which is to be admitted into court touching the question 

 of man's geological chronology. The first of these questions 

 has been long before the geological world, and little that is new 

 has been added in connection with the recent discussion. What 

 has been said will be likely to stimulate the accumulation and 

 critical consideration of data bearing on the question. 



Concerning the question of man's antiquity in terms of geo- 

 logical history, the discussion has for the first time sufficiently 

 emphasized in the popular mind the importance of the most 

 rigid scrutiny of the evidence which claims to mark a definite 

 stage in geological history when man's existence is beyond 

 question. For the first time, the criteria by which such evidence 



