1876.] Anthropology. ol 
interest ornithologists to know that the tree sparrow of Europe (Pyr- 
gita montana) has lately been discovered to be a resident of the United 
States 
The resemblance of this species to the English house sparrow has 
led me to be on the watch for it since the introduction of the latter, but 
without success until I found it in St. Louis, Mo., last spring. Here I 
found the new species abundant, but was unwilling to take any until the 
breeding season was over. Four skins sent to Mr. G. N. Lawrence, of 
New York, are pronounced by him to “ agree accurately with the plate 
and description of this species.’ He also informs me that about five 
years ago Mr. Eugene Schieffelin noticed fifty or sixty of these birds in 
the store of a bird importer in New York, where they were unrecognized ; 
and these were probably afterwards sold as or with P. domestica. This 
is undoubtedly the explanation of their occurrence here, and further 
search will very likely show their presence in other localities. 
With a general resemblance to the common house sparrow, Pyrgita 
montana is readily distinguished by its chestnut crown and the similarity 
of both sexes and the young. In St. Louis it considerably outnumbers 
P. domestica, and, as is the case in Europe, it prefers the outskirts of the 
city and the country. In other respects these two species closely re- 
semble each other. — Dr. James C. Merritt, U. S. Army. 
ANTHROPOLOGY. 
Antiquity or Man. — Mr. Southall, in his late work on the Recent 
igin of Man, founds an argument against the antiquity of man’s origin 
in the fact that what are unquestionably paleolithic implements are oc- 
casionally found on the surface of the ground, either alone or associated 
with neolithic or polished stone implements. There are two reasons 
why such a commingling of the two forms does not militate against this 
division of an unquestioned stone age. It should be remembered, in the 
first place, that paleolithic implements, after being long buried in strata 
of sand or gravel, may become exposed by floods, landslides, or through 
ice-action, as when an ice-gorge causes a river to cut for itself a new 
channel, thereby sweeping away the soil over a considerable belt of coun- 
7 Subsequently, the river resumes its older channel, and the newer 
implements in time are dropped and so mingled with the exposed older 
forms. From what I have seen of the action of the Delaware River 
along its valley, especially between the cities of Trenton and Borden- 
town, in New Jersey, I have satisfied myself that such may have occa- 
sionally been the case during the occupancy of this neighborhood by 
the Indians, Secondly, if the Indians were the first and only inhabitants 
of the Atlantic coast of America, prior to the arrival of the Europeans, 
it is quite certain that they were a paleolithic people when they reached 
ese shores, and whatever may have been the geological changes subse- 
quently, they maintained their ground, and very gradually learned to 
