THE EVOLUTION OF MAN 85 
in the open, the chances of so shrewd a creature being caught in 
the flood waters and thus buried in sediment were not very great. 
However we account for it, the fact remains that relics of ancient man 
are rare and are valued accordingly. 
In North America.—Repeated instances of seemingly ancient 
man have been brought to light in North America, such as the “Cale- 
veras skull” of the California go]d-bearing gravels, which was satirized 
by Bret Harte; the Nebraska “Loess man,” and those of the Trenton 
gravels; none of which, with the possible exception of the last-men- 
tioned, has proved to be really old in the geologic sense. Indirect 
evidence of human antiquity, that is, the association of North Ameri- 
can man with animals which are now extinct, while very rare, has been 
reported in at least two highly authentic instances. The first of these 
was at Attica, New York, and is attested by Doctor John M. Clarke, 
the New York state geologist. Four feet below the surface of the 
ground, in a black muck, he found the bones of the mastodon (Masto- 
don americanus), and 12 inches below this, in undisturbed clay, pieces 
of pottery and thirty fragments of charcoal. The charcoal may have 
been of natural origin, but the presence of the pottery seems conclu- 
sive. The other instance was that of the remains of a herd of extinct 
bison (Bison antiquus) found near Smoky Hill River, Logan County, 
Kansas, and thus described by Professor Williston: An “arrow-head 
was found underneath the right scapula of the largest skeleton, 
embedded in the matrix, but touching the bone itself. The skeleton 
was lying upon the right side... . . The bone bed when cleared off 
. contained the skeletons of five or six adult animals, and two or 
three younger ones, together with a foetal skeleton within the pelvis 
of one of the adult skeletons. The animals had evidently all perished 
together, during the winter. There was no possibility of the accidental 
intrusion of the arrow-head in the place where found. ... . It must 
have been within the body of the animal at the time of death, or have 
been lying on the surface beneath its body.” 
What at this writing is claimed to be another genuine case of such 
an association, this time of the actual human bones, has just been 
announced from Florida. This find, which has been reported by 
State Geologist Sellards, was made at Vero, eastern Florida, in 1913. 
The fossil human bones are from two incomplete skeletons and are 
found in strata which also contain remains of the following extinct 
species: Elephas columbi, Equus leidyi, a fox, a deer, the ground-sloth, 
Megalonyx jeffersoni, and the American mastodon, 
