ARE THERE EVIDENCES OF MAN IN THE DRIFT* 323 



him a figurine which they said they had found in sinking an arte- 

 sian well in the neighborhood at a depth, if I remember rightly, 

 of more than three hundred feet. The figurine is a little image of 

 a man or woman done in clay and baked. It is not metre than an 

 inch and a half in length, and is slender and delicate, more delicate 

 than an ordinary clay pipestem, and altogether exceedingly fra- 

 gile. Hold the figurine at the height of your eye and let it fall on 

 the hearth at your feet, and it would be shivered into fragments. 

 It was claimed that this figurine had been brought up from the 

 bottom of an artesian well while the men were working, or about 

 the time that they were working at the well, and that as it came 

 out it was discovered. When this story was told the writer, he 

 simply jested with those^ who claimed to have found it. He had 

 known the Indians that live in the neighborhood, had seen their 

 children play with just such figurines, and had no doubt that the 

 little image had lately belonged to some Indian child, and said the 

 same. While stopping at the hotel different persons spoke about 

 it, and it was always passed off as a jest ; and various comments 

 were made about it by various people, some of them claiming that 

 it had given them much sport, and that a good many " tenderfeet " 

 had looked at it and believed it to be genuine ; and they seemed 

 rather pleased that I had detected the hoax. When I returned to 

 Washington I related the jest at a dinner table, and afterward it 

 passed out of my mind. In reading Prof. Wright's second book I 

 had many surprises, but none of them greater than when I dis- 

 covered that this figurine had fallen into his hauds, and that he 

 had actually published it as evidence of the great antiquity of 

 man in the valley of the Snake River. 



Consider the circumstances. A fragile toy is buried in the 

 sands and gravels and bowlders of a torrential stream. Three 

 hundred feet of materials are accumulated over it from the floods 

 of thousands of years. Then volcanoes burst forth and pour floods 

 of lava over all ; and under more than three hundred feet of sands, 

 gravels, clays, and volcanic rocks the fragile figurine remains for 

 centuries, under such magical conditions that the very color of 

 the burning is preserved. Then well-diggers, with a pump drill, 

 hammer and abrade the rocks, and bore a six-inch hole down to 

 this figurine without destroying it, and with a sand-pump bring 

 it to the surface, to be caught by the well-digger; and Prof. 

 Wright believes the story of the figurine, and places it on record 

 in his book ! 



There are some other cases that ought to be considered, but 

 none of them differs greatly from those given, and enough has 

 already been said. 



Now it must here be confessed that a large number of geolo- 

 gists some years ago were willing to acknowledge the validity of 



