17 



The sixth instance (Cresson's Claymont argillite) must be rejected, 

 first, on the ground of inherent improbability, because its acceptance 

 would at once multiply human antiquity by 10, 20, or 50; second, be- 

 cause of the presumption that the object really occurred in the talus; x 

 and third, because of the utter lack of definitely corroborative testimony. 

 It is to be observed that Professor Wright's personal plea concerning 

 this instance is incompetent, irrevelant, and immaterial because his 

 conception of glacial history is without time basis — he fails to recognize 

 the succession of widely separated episodes of which the glacial period 

 was made up. His expressions, too, are misleading; his declaration that 

 "both Mr. McGee and myself have visited the locality with Dr. Cresson, 

 and there can be no doubt that the implement occurred beneath the 

 Columbia gravel" (pages 258, 259), conveys the idea that the three par- 

 ties named concurred in the observation and the conclusion, while as a 

 matter of fact no more than two of the trio were ever on the ground at 

 the same time, only one made the original observation, and one at least 

 emphatically repudiates the conclusion that the "implement," if imple- 

 ment it be, occurred underneath the Columbia gravel. The distortion of 

 fact in this declaration smacks of the SHYSTER. (R) 



The seventh instance cannot be accepted by any cautious archeolo- 

 gist at the apparent value assigned by the reverend professor. There 

 is, indeed, a large body of testimony concerning the association of human 

 relics in auriferous gravels beneath broad lava sheets on the Pacific 

 coast, but the gravels and lava sheets have not been correlated with the 

 glacial deposits of eastern United States or Europe, and their antiquity, 

 either in years or in terms of geologic chronology, has not been determined. 



The eighth instance (the JSTampa figurine) is the most satisfactory of 

 all, since it affords a measure of the competence on the Reverend Pro- 

 fessor Wright as a geologist and as a reasoner of the important subject of 

 the antiquity of man. It is alleged that in 1889 the figure, a brittle, 

 ■ baked-clay image as fragile as a clay pipe-stem, was brought up in the 



but never within them, while the ruder implements found within the 

 gravels do not occur upon the gravel surface." That article is worth read- 

 ing by anyone interested in this review. 



(Note R) Prof essor Wright does not say he visited the spot with McGee, 

 but with Cresson. Professor Wright is a high-minded, candid Christian 

 gentleman and McG-ee would be fortunate to have him for a companion. Is 

 it not funny that McGee's abuse should have accompanied this statement in 

 Professor Wright's book, p. 258, "As there is so much chance for error of 



1 The presumption implicitly accepted by Mr. Cresson in a recent publication — 

 Science, vol. xx, 1892, page 304. 



