NovemMser 8, 1918] 
The distinguished author whose work is be- 
ing reviewed has great difficulty (66, pp. 42, 
43) in understanding how a human skeleton 
might have become covered up in a deposit 
being laid down slowly in water; and he con- 
cludes thereupon that the body must have been 
intentionally buried. In the sand deposit no. 
2, Dr. Sellards? found a nearly complete 
skeleton of a large alligator. If now, in 
Hrdliéka’s remarks “ alligator” be substituted 
for “human body” and “ corpse” we shall be 
compelled to conclude that the alligator too 
was a subject of intentional burial. 
Various other difficulties are encountered by 
our author regarding the degrees of aggrega- 
tion and dispersal of the human bones and 
their physical and chemical states; but after 
all has been said, the fact remains that they 
are in practically the same condition as those 
of the deer and the great armadillo and the 
alligator, about which nobody raises any ques- 
tions. 
On his page 37 Dr. Hrdlitéka undertakes a 
consideration of the “broader aspects of the 
ease” and he asks whether it was possible for 
man to be in Florida in Pleistocene times. He 
himself replies that the presence of man there 
at that time, or even on the American con- 
tinent, can not be admitted by anthropology. 
In doing so, he simply assumes that what is 
supposed to be known about man in Europe 
furnishes a standard by which all matters 
anthropological the world over must be settled. 
He says that no pottery is known to have ex- 
isted in the world before the Neolithic age. 
On the contrary, it has been shown that pot- 
tery has been found in this country in the 
early Pleistocene at Charleston, Vero and 
Nampa. Did an Indian go out furtively into 
that swamp at Charleston, dig down 3 feet in 
the muck, and hide away from his fellows, 
alongside of the mastodon tusk and horse 
teeth, that potsherd? 
On his page 38 Dr. Hrdliéka tells us that if 
man had reached Florida in the early Pleisto- 
cene he must have been represented on our 
continent by large numbers and that these 
7 Eighth Ann. Rep. Fla. Geol. Surv., p. 145. 
_ 8Hay, Amer. Anthrop., Vol. XX., pp. 15, 16, 25. 
SCIENCE 
461 
would have left some traces of their presence, 
of which he insists there are none. On the 
contrary, the present writer, as cited above, has 
shown that there are numerous evidences of 
man’s early presence in America. What Dr. 
Hrdliéka seems really to believe is that men 
at that time were extremely scarce, so few in 
number that they could not have reached 
America. At any rate (66, pp. 86, 49, 50) he 
thinks that the discovery of a single human 
skeleton at any place would be a marvel; while 
the chance of finding another near by and in 
a different geological formation would be in- 
finitely small. This conception is worthy of 
application to other cases. Some years ago 
Mr. J. W. Gidley discovered in a crevice in 
western Maryland, a jaw of an eland hardly 
distinguishable from the eland of South 
Africa. How, now, did that eland jaw get 
into that fissure, “in a little wild spot of the 
far-away wide inhospitable” mountains of 
western Maryland? <A great part of the Pleis- 
tocene must have been required by the ances- 
tors of this antelope for their “ physical dif- 
ferentiation, multiplication in’ numbers, ac- 
climatization to new environments and spread 
over the numerous territories of the old world, 
the warmer parts of which were their cradle” 
(p. 87). And then they had to occupy the 
new world as far east and south as Maryland! 
To do this they must have existed in great 
numbers; and so they might be expected to 
have left abundant traces of themselves. No 
such traces have, however, ever been reported 
from any other locality. The animals must, 
therefore, have been scarce indeed. What a 
marvel it is then that remains of one skeleton 
should have been met with, especially of a spe- 
cies which probably was not addicted to hid- 
ing in crevices; but the miraculous thing is 
that Gidley found in that same formation, in 
that same fissure, remains of two individuals! 
This is more astonishing than would be the 
finding of a second skeleton near by in an 
overlying formation; for as the years by thou- 
sands passed by the chances would increase 
that parts of another skeleton would be buried 
not far away. Our credulity is overpowered. 
Out with geology and paleontology! How 
