1882.] 



The Ancient Man of Calai 



3 5 i 



ship and evidently fabricated by people low in the scale of civili- 

 zation. But such as they are, they show with what appears to be 

 conclusive proof, that they were made before Table mountain lava 

 was erupted, and perhaps long before, for they were also surely 

 made before the auriferous gravels were deposited. 



One item comes naturally to our consideration here in the line 

 of confirmation. The auriferous gravels contain abundant re- 

 mains of plants and animals. Mastodons and elephants appear 



?J 



to have specially abounded ; in no other part of the world have 

 their bones and teeth been found in greater numbers. With them 

 were found species of rhinoceros, Elotherium, horse, ox, camel, 

 &c., &c. But all of these were of types long since passed away, 

 and the same can be said of the leaves and fossilized wood. Dr. 

 Newberry's report characterizes them as being entirely unlike 

 anything now growing in California, and as belonging to the 

 Tertiary age, the later Pliocene. Now we know that the fauna 

 and flora of a country cannot be completely changed except 

 through the intervention of a very great space in time, or the 

 agency of a sudden cataclysm and reconstruction. 



