324 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the evidence of Glacial man. Many of them had committed them- 

 selves to it, and yet when better evidence was brought they were 

 willing to withdraw opinions previously affirmed. The writer 

 himself has entertained a belief in the existence of Glacial man, 

 and there is still some evidence in California that has not yet 

 been examined by the new methods, and it may be that this evi- 

 dence is good. The writer has much linguistic material that 

 points to the high antiquity of man on this continent. So we will 

 all withhold final judgment until the evidence is in, being per- 

 fectly willing to believe in Glacial man, or Tertiary man, or Cre- 

 taceous man, if the evidence demands it, and being just as willing 

 to believe that man was introduced on this continent within the 

 last two thousand years, if the evidence demands it. What care 

 we what the truth is, if it is the truth ? 



Some years ago Mr. McGee found in a lake formation of the 

 West a stone implement, like those still made by the Indians of 

 that country, in beds of an age not greatly differing from those 

 of the gravels of the Eastern shore ; and he published his find. In 

 after years he had learned to distinguish overplacement from 

 foundation formation, and he questioned his own conclusions. 

 This was before the present controversy arose, before Mr. Holmes 

 had so skillfully trenched the hills and shown the true age of the 

 stone implements of the Atlantic slope; but still Mr. McGee, 

 warned by his own observations of the difference between over- 

 placement and under-formation, concluded that he might have 

 been too hasty, and published a long article on the subject, from 

 which the following extract is made : 



" It is a fair presumption that any unusual object found with- 

 in, or apparently within, an unconsolidated deposit is an adven- 

 titious inclusion. Every cautious field geologist accustomed to 

 the study of unconsolidated superficial deposits quickly learns to 

 question the verity of apparently original inclusions ; he may, it 

 is true, exhaust the entire range of hypothesis at his command 

 without satisfying himself that the inclusion is adventitious ; yet 

 he is seldom satisfied that he has exhausted the range of possible 

 hypothesis as to the character of the inclusion, and hesitates long 

 before accepting any unusual association as veritable. His case 

 is not that of the invertebrate paleontologist at work in the 

 Palaeozoic rocks, to whom a single fossil may carry conviction ; 

 for not only are the possibilities of adventitious inclusion indefi- 

 nitely less in solid strata, but the mineral character of the fossil 

 is commonly identical with that of its matrix, and so affords in- 

 herent evidence of the verity of the association. Nowhere, indeed, 

 in the entire range of the complex and sometimes obscure and 

 elusive phenomena of geology is there more reason for withhold- 

 ing final judgment based upon unusual association than in the 



