INVESTIGATION VERSUS PROPAGANDISM 309 



T, Chamberlin, of Chicago, who returned for a more critical exami- 

 nation of certain features than was possible on the former visit; 

 Assistant Geologist Herman Gunter, Mr. Isaac M. Weills, and Mr. 

 Frank Ayers. 



The results of the second field conference appeared in the 

 October-November number of the same volume of this Journal. 

 The contributions to this were from Dr. Elias H. Sellards (pp. 659- 

 60), Dr. Edward W. Berry (pp. 661-66), and Dr. Rollin T. Cham- 

 berlin (pp. 667-83.) 



The development of the case in connection with the two field con- 

 ferences and the symposia. — It is aside from the purpose of this 

 discussion to review these papers as personal contributions; we 

 merely wish to trace the evolution of the case by contributions 

 which represent different points of view and different methods of 

 inquiry. We shall therefore merely try to bring out the most 

 vital features of these papers as an additional resume of the official 

 composite work and as contributions from the .standpoints of 

 physico-dynamic inquiry, of vertebrate paleontology, of human 

 osteology, of the human artifacts and industries, of fossil plants, 

 and of other sources of evidence. 



Preliminary to such outline, it may be helpful to remark that the 

 Pleistocene age of the ancient men of Vero was pressed to the front 

 as the specially vital question of the case at the outset. This 

 specific question gave trend to the inquiry and to the contributions 

 we are to sketch. Now, a dominating question of this kind inevi- 

 tably forces the discussion to center,, consciously or unconsciously, 

 on the nominal or the conventional aspects of the case implied by 

 the technical term Pleistocene, rather than on the strict realities 

 involved in the case. The crux of the problem is thus made to 

 hang more or less largely on technical terms. These in turn 

 depend on the criteria that are accepted as guides in fixing the use 

 of these terms. This grows naturally out of the history of attempts 

 to show that man existed in America at certain early stages. 



Three things are to be kept in mind in interpreting a discussion 

 dominated by such a foremost feature: (i) the term Pleistocene 

 is not used in precisely the same sense by all writers, (2) the criteria 

 used in establishing the technical age are subject to challenge, and 



