640 
fraudulent specimens have been manufac- 
tured, planted, dug up and sold as genuine, 
and that great deceptions have been prac- 
ticed. JI have not hesitated to attack and 
destroy their claims whenever presented. 
But I here contend that in passing on the 
genuineness of specimens, we should decide 
fairly and honestly. We should first get 
possession of all the facts, sift them to 
their last residuum of truth, and, giving 
each fact its fair and due weight, decide the 
question according to our best and truest 
judgment. This should be done ‘ without 
prejudice or preconceived opinion.’ It is 
unfair to decide such questions in advance 
of knowledge of the evidence; it is un- 
scientific to decide a prior? that so-and-so is 
true because it must be true, and so-and-so 
is not true because it can’t be true. I heard 
one who claimed to be a prehistoric anthro- 
pologist say that he would not believe a 
certain object to be a genuine find if he had 
found it himself. It is obviously impossi- 
ble to argue with, much less convince, such a 
man. In determining these contested ques- 
tions, I have ever sought to be impartial 
and, above all things, honest. It is only 
thus that we can hope to arrive at the truth. 
Boucher de Perthes’s discovery of paleo- 
lithic implements in original and undis- 
turbed quaternary river gravels has been 
described in its appropriate place in this 
address. 
After the proposition that these were re- 
mains of human industry had been ac- 
cepted, the European investigators drew 
deductions based on the similarity of objects 
and implements found in other localities 
where the geologic or paleontologic evi- 
dences were not so plain or so plentiful, 
and the finding of paleolithic implements 
alone has been accepted as evidence of 
human occupation during that period. 
The same practice has been pursued in 
America. The deposit at Trenton, New 
Jersey, is accepted by geologists as belong- 
SCIENCE. 
[N. S. Vou. X. No. 253. 
ing to the quaternary period; and while 
the finding therein of paleolithic imple- 
ments or human remains has been disputed, 
it seems to have occurred so often, and these 
finds to have been so numerous that it can- 
not long continue to be denied. The dis- 
covery of a mammoth tusk in the Trenton 
gravels, now on exhibition at Rutgers Col- 
lege, New Brunswick, N. J., is confirmatory 
evidence not to be overlooked or lightly re- 
garded. I do not propose to enter into a 
discussion of the weather beaten subject of 
the Trenton gravels. I presented a paper 
before this section at the Detroit meeting,* 
by which I still stand. The same sort of 
evidence is furnished by the Tuscarawas 
specimen found by Mr. Mills in the glacial 
till of Ohio, and described by Professor 
Wright.; Likewise the implement found 
by Dr. Hilbourne T. Cresson, Delaware, 
and made the subject of a paper by Pro- 
fessor Wright, read before this Section at 
this meeting. 
The chapter on High Plateau paleoliths 
deals with paleolithic chipped flint imple- 
ments found in England on the surface ; 
others of the same nature have been found, 
still on the surface, in France on the high 
plateaux between the rivers Seine and 
Yonne. These have been recognized by every 
one who is competent to have an opinion, 
as true paleoliths. The same condition ap- 
plies to certain localities in the United 
States, that is to say, on the plateaux on 
the headwaters of certain rivers beyond the 
erosion by which the valleys were formed. 
So there have been found on the surface in 
the United States many chipped flint imple- 
ments which from their size, shape, 
appearance and mode of manufacture, are 
identical to the smallest detail with the 
* Published in Volume XLVI., 1897, pp. 381-383, 
of the Proceedings. 
+ Popular Science Monthly, July, 1891, Vol. XX XIX., 
No. 3, pp. 314-319. Man and the Glacial period, pp. 
251-3. 
