PREGLACIAL MAN. 115 



posits. This shows the interval between the palanthropic and nean- 

 thropic periods, and also the post-glacial date of man in Switzerland. It 

 corresponds with a great number of other facts. 



I cannot doubt that evidences of the second continental period exist 

 in America. Those which are afforded by the warm-water fauna of the 

 southern bay of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence I pointed out many years 

 ago. There are also superficial deposits which show depression since 

 the glacial age, though I fear that many of them have been confounded 

 with the ordinary drift, and I think the attention of geologists who study 

 these more recent deposits should now be directed to the separation of 

 rubble drift, head and loess from the beds properly belonging to the 

 Glacial period, and to the bearing of these facts on questions as to the 

 possible occurrence of man in America in the Palanthropic age. 



Preglacial Man. 



I confess that I have all along been skeptical on geologic grounds as 

 to the numerous finds of paleolithic implements in the glacial gravels. 

 The gravels themselves are probabl}- in many instances postglacial, and 

 it is doubtful if the implements belong to these gravels or are merely 

 superficial. The observations of Mr W. H. Holmes, of the United States 

 Geological Survey, seem now to have confirmed these doubts, very nota- 

 bly in the case of the celebrated Trenton implements. With the aid of 

 a deep excavation made for a cit}^ sewer he 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 re- 

 sorted to find material for implements and left behind them rejected or 

 unfinished pieces. The alleged discovery has, therefore, no geologic or 

 anthropologic 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, where the alleged implements are probably not artificial. 

 These observations not only dispose, for the present at least, of paleo- 

 lithic man in America, but the}^ suggest the propriety of a revision of the 

 wliole 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 too little place in the science of anthropology. 



The question, however, still remains whether there is any evidence of 



