6 



over, anthropology is the most complex and obscure among the subject 

 of knowledge, so that its field gives but treacherous ground even for the 

 cautious student. Yet the science of man is peculiarly attractive to 

 human kind, and for this reason the untrained are constantly venturing 

 upon its purlieus ; and since each heedless adventurer leads a rabble of 

 followers, it behooves those who have at heart the good of the science 

 not only to guard carefully their own footsteps, but to bell the blind lead- 

 ers of the blind. The blind leaders are sometimes comparatively inno- 

 cent traffickers in the imaginary, like unto the SELLERS OF POISON" 

 DRINKS, and sometimes the less pardonable DECEIVERS OF THE 

 UNWARY and DEFEATERS OF JUSTICE, like unto COMMERCIAL 

 SWINDLERS ; while the blind led are the dupes of the one and the 

 victims of the other. 



No question in anthropology is more enticing than that of human 

 antiquity, and there is much writing on the subject — some good, more 

 bad. In the latter class fall two recent publications, which have much 

 in common. The first of these is Doughty 's "Evidences of Man in the 

 Drift j" 1 the second is Wright's "Man and the Glacial Period." 2 Both 

 works profess to treat of the geologic antiquity of man, though neither 

 author can be classed as geologist or anthropologist. The former is a 

 numismatist, a member of the American Numismatic and Archaeological 

 Society, and makes no pretense of geologic skill or repute ; the latter 

 is a professor of theology in a theologic seminary, yet lays claim 

 withal to geologic skill, (C) which serves to render his writing the 

 more specious. 



(Note C) The reviewer and Professor Wright are at entire antipodes as 

 to the best way to acquire "geologic skill." Professor Wright has spent 

 much time in the field studying nature, while Mr. McGee seems to think a 

 man on a stool will know most about the field. Witness his ' 'geomorphy" 

 hereafter. Early in Mr. McGee's remarkable career as a geologist, in an 

 address before the Iowa Horticultural Society, after discussing the glacial 

 field in Illinois, Iowa and Missouri, he said : "It hence appears that in 

 certain cases the geologist is able, after a few weeks' actual observation and 

 some philosophic research, to so definitely formulate the character of 



1 Evidences of Man in the Drift — a description of certain archaeological objects re- 

 cently discovered in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania and New- 

 Jersey: read before the American Numismatic and Archaeological Society, March 

 28, 1892 ; by Francis Worcester Doughty. New York : privately printed, 1892. 



2 The International Scientific Series. Man and the Glacial Period; by G. Freder- 

 ick Wright, D. D., LL. D., F. G. S. A., professor in Oberlin Theological Seminary, 

 assistant on the United States Geological Survey, author of The Ice Age in North 

 America, Logic of Christian Evidences, etc.; with an Appendix on Tertiary Man, by 

 Prof. Henry W. Haynes (fully illustrated). New York: D. Appleton and Company, 

 1892. 



