638 SCIENCE. 
those facts are assumed. Whatever may 
be the conclusions concerning the fraudu- 
lent character of this specimen based upon 
its alleged ‘planting’ by contemporary 
miners, as a practical joke to ‘fool Pro- 
fessor Whitney,’ it should be remarked 
that the evidence favoring this charge is 
itself open to as grave suspicions as is the 
rankest fraud ever perpetrated. The geo- 
logic changes of that country have been so 
great, that it requires the gravest consider- 
ation and an intimate study or knowledge 
of all the facts before any one is justified in 
passing upon the archeologic question. I 
cannot here or now investigate the subject 
from either of these view points. I am not 
a geologist and I have never visited the lo- 
cality. I can only suggest some of the 
points to be considered before a conclusion 
is reached, and raise a warning or danger 
flag to those who would decide against the 
authenticity of the specimen on insufficient 
or a priori grounds. 
The Stanislaus river, at the time of the 
deposition of the lava and gravel in which 
the skull was found, ran down the side of 
Table mountain in the same neighborhood 
in which it now runs, but its valley was 
then some fifteen hundred feet higher than 
at present ; that is, since the valley of the 
Stanislaus was choked up and the water 
turned aside by the eruption of lava and 
the deposit of cemented gravel, the deflected 
river has cut or eroded a new channel 
fifteen hundred or more feet deeper into the 
earth than was the earlier channel. This 
will give some idea of the immensity of 
time and the great surface changes with 
which we have to deal. Many implements 
and objects of undoubted human origin have 
been found in divers localities in California, 
alleged to have been imbedded in the same 
kind of gravels and to have formed part of 
similar deposits. Itis part of the argument 
against the Calaveras skull to assail the au- 
thenticity of their discovery. First it was 
[N. S. Von. X. No. 253. 
charged that these finds were made by 
miners, laymen, ignorant and unaccustomed 
to recognize or describe them with scien- 
tific accuracy ; but this was answered when 
Professor Clarence King, then head of the 
Geological Survey of the United States, and 
the highest scientific authority, found one 
of the pestles in situ, imbedded in the ce- 
mented gravel under the lava cap, that he 
recognized its character before he exhumed 
it, and in view of the importance of the 
question involved, proceeded with care to 
dig it out. He preserved it, brought it to 
Washington, and placed it in its lawful 
depository, the U. 8. National Museum, 
where it now is. It is remarkable that 
similar implements and objects to the num- 
ber of about three hundred should have 
been found, alleged by their finders to have 
been dug out of the gravels under the lava 
cap in various localities in California—it is. 
remarkable, I say that these should all 
have been frauds, and their finders either 
swindlers and liars, or else have duped 
themselves hy their own discoveries. Cali- 
fornia miners have been generally credited 
with more astuteness than to be their own 
dupes, while it is curious if a whole state 
or a whole class within a state should com- 
bine in a general swindle and lie, out of 
which no profit, present or prospective, 
was possible. The objection has been made 
that these implements are polished or 
ground, at least pecked or hammered ready 
for polishing, therefore belong to the Neo- 
lithie or polished stone age; and this it is. 
alleged is incompatible with their great an- 
tiquity. Some American archeologists as- 
sert that chipped stone implements were 
more difficult to make than polished ones, 
and on the well-recognized principle that. 
the simplest and easiest way was the earli- 
est, while the more complex and difficult: 
ways came later, they insist with pertinac- 
ity that European classification is erroneous, 
and that the relative chronological positions. 
