A 
A Marvel Without Parallel, if True 
A LETTER, a few days ago, from Dr William 
Henry Holmes, the distinguished head of the 
Anthropological Department of the ^National Museum 
at Washington, which began, _ My dear Melvin, 
filled me with pleasant recollections of my boyhood 
days, when I used to address him as Teacher m the 
little schoolhouse at old Science Hill. Then, Mel- 
vin” was ‘one of his obstreperous boys, and also one 
of his most ardent admirers. This letter and the ac- 
companying off-print from a scientific journal, was 
most opportune apropos of the presentation of In- 
dian Lore in the last Archaeological Review. 
I have often called attention to the natural resem- 
blances and at the same time the lack of evidence of 
historical connection between Indian remains in 
America and the remains of Europe and the East, 
and, also, to the comparative recentness of the In- 
dian occupation of America. It is with great pleas- 
ure that I quote now from Dr. Holmes some sen- 
tences as a fitting summary and conclusion of the 
presentation of Indian remains. 
Concerning recent discovery, at Vero, b Ion da, of 
human remains associated with fossil remains of the 
Pleistocene age, and the inference of the great age ot 
man on the western continent which some have has- 
tened to draw, Dr. Holmes calls attention, m re- 
sponse, to the shifting back and forth of channels ot 
streams over wide areas, and the slipping of strata 
on slopes: “It is the failure to recognize these im- 
portant considerations,” he says, that has led m 
many cases to the confident and regrettable announce- 
ments on the part of students respecting the original 
association of human remains with the remains ot 
fossil animals of the earlier periods. If now such 
views ... are allowed to prevail, we shall have to 
accept the conclusion that American man had ad- 
vanced to the pottery-making stage in the middle or 
early Pleistocene, and that, after the lapse of a vast 
period, the art was revived by the same or another 
people using the same materials, employing similar 
methods, and attaining identical results^ xm the samd 
region — a marvel without parallel m the history ot 
m “It is manifestly a serious duty of the archeologist 
and the historian of man to continue to challenge 
every reported discovery suggesting the great geo- 
logical antiquity of the race in America, and to ex- 
pose the dangerous ventures of little experienced or 
biased students in a field which they have not made 
fully their own.” „ , VT , 7TT 
Dr. William Henry Holmes, Science, N. S., Vol. aDVH, 
No. 1223, pp. 561, 562, June 7, 1918. 
By my boy pupil at Science Hill, near Cadiz, 
Ohio, about 1868, now, 1920, he is the Right Reverend 
Melvin Kyle, D.D., L.L.D., President of the Xehia 
Theological Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri, conducting 
explorations in Palestine. 
