432 General Notes. [July, 
oldest stone implements would therefore bear most resemblance to 
broken pebbles, and considering the fact, that in New Jersey this west- 
ern form is quite common, and so found as to place its artificial origin 
beyond doubt, it becomes highly probable, if not certain, that the speci- 
mens figured by Professor Comstock are traces of the former occupants 
of Wyoming Territory, and that, just as they are, they subserved some 
purpose as a weapon or domestic implement. 
Of their antiquity I can form no opinion ; but as already stated in this 
journal, those found in New Jersey belong to a far-distant past, and are 
doubtless traces of a people antedating the red man. — CHARLES C. 
Apsortt, M. D. 
WERE THE OLDEST American ProrLe EsKImos ? — In regard to Dr. 
Abbott’s paper in the June NATURALIST, in which the ground is taken that , 
the Eskimos represent an older North American man, whom “ intrusive” 
Indians have driven northward and replaced, the following considera- ` 
tions suggest themselves. This view is doubtless inspired by the ef- 
forts of anthropologists in Europe to identify boreal races like the 
Lapps with the pre-Aryan population of Europe. Virchow concludes 
that no group of older skulls yet found can be said to agree with any of 
the living boreal types of man. The argument rests on the character of 
the stone implements. Dr. Abbott seems to rely for support to the the- 
ory he adopts on the “ similarity of the Delaware Valley implements to 
those of Europe’? But there is likely to be a similarity in implements 
between different races, at the same stage of culture. The view that the 
Lapps have suffered race-degradation is interesting, if it can explain the 
difference existing between the older European skull and that of the 
modern Lapp. But although the Lapps are possibly degraded Finns, 
the explanation is not offered to explain the wider relationship of $ ns 
boreal types existing with the older European man. So far as the im- 
plements are concerned they are then not of themselves sufficient to sus 
tain Dr. Abbott’s theory with regard to the Eskimos. The evidence 
from tradition, appealed to by Dr. Abbott, is hardly to be trusted. Per- 
haps no traditions as a class are more untrustworthy than those of the 
North American Indians. They had not acquired the faculty of recol- 
lecting, one may almost say. Ido not think it is safe to say that it has 
been “demonstrated conclusively that some eighty thousand years ago 
the last glacial epoch came to a close,” but, even so, is it safe to rely 
upon a tradition which refers back to an event which must have hap- 
pened during a remote epoch? The question remains, Where did the 1- 
trusive Indians come from? And in regard to man do we not find atts 
that it is, as a rule, unsafe to speak of “ autochthones,” and that there 
has been replacement everywhere? At whatever point man may have 
originated, he has spread from causes acting on himself from without, 
such as those dependent on climate and food, and then from causes oe 
ing from his advance in intelligence ; these latter movements may be 
