PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. x i x 



bear so heavily against it if we were compelled to suppose 

 that the lava of the Snake Kiver region was all of Tertiary 

 or even of early Quaternary age. Furthermore, the evi- 

 dence of the occurrence of a great debacle in the Snake 

 River Valley during the Glacial period, incident upon the 

 bursting of the banks of Lake Bonneville, goes far to re- 

 move antecedent presumptions against the occurrence of 

 human implements in such conditions as those existing at 

 Nampa (see below, pp. 233-237). 



Mr. McGee's misunderstanding of the evidence on one 

 point is so gross, that I must make special reference to it. 

 He says * that this image " is alleged to have been pounded 

 out of volcanic tulf by a heavy drill, . . . under a thick 

 Tertiary lava bed." The statement of facts on page 298 

 bears no resemblance to this representation. It is there 

 stated that there were but fifteen feet of lava, and that 

 near the surface ; that below this there was nothing but 

 alternating beds of clay and quicksand, and that the lava 

 is post-Tertiary. The sand-pump I should perhaps have 

 described more fully in the book, as I had already done in 

 the communication to the Boston Society of Natural His- 

 tory. It was a tube eight feet long, with a valve at the 

 bottom three and a half inches in diameter on the inside. 

 Through this it was the easiest thing in the world for the 

 object, which is only one inch and a half long, to be 

 brought up in the quicksand without injury. 



The baseless assertions of Mr. McGee, involving the 

 honesty of Messrs. Kurtz and Duffes, are even less fortu- 

 nate and far more reprehensible. " It is a fact," says Mr. 

 McGee, "that one of the best-known geologists of the 

 world chanced to visit Nampa while the boring was in 

 progress, and the figurine and the pretty fiction were laid 

 before him. He recognized the figurine as a toy such as 

 the neighbouring Indians give their children, and laughed 



* Literary Northwest, vol. ii, p. 275. 



