392 Canadian Record of Science. 
by Mr. W. H. Holmes of the American Geological Survey, 
who has published his observations in the American Journal 
of Anthropology and elsewhere. 
One of the most widely known examples was that of 
Trenton on the Delaware, where there was a bed of gravel 
alleged to be Pleistocene, and which seemed to contain 
enough of “ palolithic,” implements to stock all the 
museums in the world. The evidence of age was not, how- 
ever, satisfactory in a geological point of view, and Holmes, . 
with the aid of a deep excavation made for a city sewer, 
has shown that the supposed implements do not belong to 
the undisturbed gravel but merely to a talus of loose debris 
lying against it and to which modern Indians resorted to 
_ find material for implements, and left behind them rejected 
or unfinished pieces. This alleged discovery has therefore 
no geological or anthropological significance. The same 
acute and industrious observer has inquired into a number 
of similar cases in different parts of the United States, and 
finds all liable to objections on the above grounds, except in 
a few cases when the alleged implements are probably not 
artificial. These observations not only dispose, for the 
present at least, of palzolithic man in America, but they 
suggest the propriety of a revision of the whole doctrine of 
“paleolithic ” and “ neolithic” implements as held in Great 
Britain and elsewhere. Such distinctions are often founded 
on forms which may quite as well represent merely local 
or temporary exigencies, or the debris of old workshops, as 
any difference of time or culture. All this I reasoned out 
many years ago on the basis of American analogies, but 
the Lyellian doctrine of modern causes as explaining 
ancient facts seems as yet to have little place in the science 
of Anthropology. It may be added that Wright, in recent 
papers, attempts to defend some of the ‘‘ paleeolithie”’ finds 
against Holmes’s criticisms; but his case seems weak. 
6.—Palanthropic and Neanthropic Man in Switzerland. 
Excavations, made by Dr. Nuesch and reported by M. 
Boule, in the deposits under a rock shelter at Schweizers- 
