15 



The seventh chapter, "Drainage systems and the glacial period," is a 

 systemless catalogue of a wide variety of interesting but distantly related 

 facts. It is the function, and indeed the end, of science to classify phe- 

 nomena in such manner as to indicate natural relation; but the arrange- 

 ment in this chapter, if arrangement there be, is not such as to set forth 

 natural relation, or geologic history, or science, but such as to conceal re- 

 lation and give a false air of simplicity and unity to glacial history, 

 and thus to contravene modern science. For example, the author re- 

 fers to WinchelFs work on the recession of the fall of St. Anthony at 

 length (pages 209, 210), but in such manner as to suppress Professor 

 Wincheli's conclusions as to the bipartition of glacial history; (0) and on 

 later pages (233-237) he quotes Russell and Gilbert on the fossil seas of 

 the Great Basin in such manner as to convey an impression of fairness and 

 completeness, yet in such terms as to conceal their conclusions concerning 

 the bipartition of the lacrustal history of this part of the continent. (P) 



To the anthropologist the interest of the subject to which the work is 

 nominally devoted centers in the eighth chapter, "Relics of man in the 

 glacial period." The instances in which "the relics of man are directly 

 and indubitably connected with deposits of this particular period east of 

 the Rocky Mountains" (page 254) are (1) the Abbott argillites from the 

 Trenton gravels; (2) the Metz "paleoliths" from Madisonville and Love- 

 land, Ohio; (3) the Cresson "paleolith" from Medora, Indiana; (4) the 

 Mills flint from Newcomerstown, Ohio; and (5) the Winchell-Babbitt 

 quartz chips from Little Falls, Minnesota. In addition he introduces in 

 evidence (6) the Cresson argillite from Claymont, Delaware; (7) the 

 Calaveras skull and other relics from the Pacific coast, and (8) the Nampa 

 figurine from Idaho, with the implication that the first of these indicates 

 the existence of early glacial or preglacial man and the others preglacial 

 or Tertiary man — the implication being deceptively guarded, however, 

 by indefinite expressions and meaningless cross-references. (Q) 



(Note 0) As if the author ought to introduce under this head matter 

 already fully discussed on pages 106-120. 



(Note P) Express statement of this fact on page 237 "evidently there 

 were two periods of marked increase in the size of the lakes, with an arid 

 period intervening." 



(Note Q) See Mr. McGee himself in the Popular Science Monthly for 

 November, 1888, making pompous and dogmatic assertions in favor of the 

 relics of glacial man in America. Pages 23, 24, he says: "It is significant 

 that in all these cases the human relics were found in deposits repre- 

 senting the closing episodes of the later epoch of the Quaternary cold." 



