EDITORIAL. 629 



the other hand, the localities of Little Falls, Minn., Medora, 

 Ind., and Loveland, Ohio, which have recently been urged as 

 offering evidence of glacial man, were passed in silence. The 

 paper referred constantly to the chipped stones a^s "paleolithic 

 implements," and ignored the recent issue raised by Professor 

 Holmes' investigations which are thought by many to make it 

 probable that, whatever their geological age, the chipped stones 

 are rejects and failures incident to the process of neolithic man- 

 facture, and are therefore neither "paleolithic" nor "implements" 

 in the proper sense of the terms. In the discussion, attention 

 was called to the significant omission of three out of six of the 

 localities which a year ago were urged as furnishing evidence of 

 glacial man. Attention was called to the Ohio exhibit in the 

 Anthropological Department of the Exposition in Chicago as 

 furnishing proof that the testimony relating to the Newcomers- 

 town locality cannot be accepted as having scientific value, 

 because the point marked upon the photographs of the exhibit 

 as being the location of the find cannot be rationally supposed 

 to be the actual locality. Considerable discussion also turned 

 upon the possibilities of intrusion, particularly through the 

 agency of the growth and decay of the roots of successive 

 generations of forests. It was urged that, allowing not more 

 than six thousand years since the close of the glacial period, 

 and allowing one hundred years for a generation of trees, sixty 

 generations may have grown in succession. In the process of 

 the growth of the large roots of the trees, the gravels and other 

 material were pressed laterally and to some extent upward by their 

 expansion, and on the decay of the roots the space they 

 occupied was refilled, presumably from above, in part at 

 least. In the case of trees which have tap roots the penetration 

 is deep, particularly on gravel terraces where the substratum is 

 porous and relatively dry and the ground-water far below the 

 surface. It was urged that, in the refilling of the numerous tubes 

 formed by the growth and decay of the roots of so many genera- 

 tions of trees, opportunities would be afforded for the occasional 

 and sometimes deep penetration of relics that were originally 



