127 
in most reasoning on this subject they are entirely ignored. Might it 
not be suggested, that not only astronomical but other data, which may not 
at present seem to bear so much on the question, might come into play upon 
it in the same way, and that the proper spirit would be one of delay, waiting 
till we had sufficient data on which to proceed 1 I will give an instance 
of how I have seen that recent investigations are affecting this question. In 
the current number of Scribner’s Magazine there is a very interesting paper 
by a Californian naturalist upon lakes, which he classifies. The lakes of which 
he speaks are chiefly those in the neighbourhood of the Yosemite Valley. 
Among the mountains of that region a most interesting study of the genesis 
of lakes may be made. He states that the silting-up of many of these glacier- 
formed lakes is a matter of very short duration — that it is done comparatively 
quickly. The writer gives a plate showing how the margin of a lake, which a 
few years back had evidently had steep rocky shores dipping into the water, 
was now gradually being fringed with meadow-land, formed by the silting 
of the mountain sides, worn down by streams and atmospheric action ; and in 
all probability in a few hundred years, if so many, that lake will be entirely 
filled up. Consequently we infer that in similar situations, as in Switzer- 
land, where these lakes have been formed and wholly or partially filled up, 
leaving a deposit of mud or gravel, the remains found therein cannot have 
been so very ancient. There are other arguments of great importance to prove 
that there is, as Mr. Callard suggests, no such being as palaeolithic man. It 
seems to me that the society would have gained very much if Mr. Callard 
had communicated the ideas I have heard from him in private, when he has 
gone further than in what he has said to-night, and I think with very good 
reason. 
The meeting was then adjourned. 
Mound-Builders in America. 
“ One of the most interesting questions in American archaeology has long 
been that of the age of the ‘mound-builders.’ Modern views seem now 
opposed to a prehistoric date for these people. Amongst other American 
workers who have inclined to the more recent date of these structures may 
be mentioned S. F. Haven, who considered the ancestors of the present 
Indians to have been the authors of these erections, and Dr. P. J. Farnsworth, 
who believed that the mound-builders were identical in race with the his- 
torical Indians of North America. On this subject a paper read before the 
Congrks International des Americanistes, 1877, by M. F. Force, has just been 
reprinted in pamphlet form by Clarke & Co., Cincinnati, 1879, entitled, ‘ To 
what Race did the Mound-builders belong V The following are some of the 
author’s conclusions : — That so far as indications are given by the growth of 
vegetation it is not necessary to hold that any of the works were abandoned 
more than one thousand years ago. That the absence of all tradition con- 
cerning the mounds among the recent Indians is no proof of their great 
K 2 
