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antiquity, as Indian tradition is short-lived and evanescent. Although the 
advent of De Soto with his armed followers, pillaging and ravaging the 
country, must have been calculated to make a deep impression, yet, when 
Europeans visited the country a century and a half later, they found not a 
vestige of a tradition of De Soto. Finally, Mr. Force considers that the 
mound-builders were tribes of Indians, more advanced than the Algonquins 
or the Dakotahs, but much less advanced than the Aztecs or the Peruvians, 
and on the same plane with the Pueblo Indians, and that they were living 
in full prosperity in the time of Charlemagne. Mr. Force reviews the evi- 
dence as to their antiquity derived from an examination of crania from these 
mounds, and endeavours to prove that either the skulls were not obtained 
from the mounds under consideration, or in other instances would not bear 
the conclusions based on their examination.” — Nature , 27 Feb., 1879 . — Ed. 
DR. SOUTHALL’S REPLY. 
[Communicated.] 
I am inclined to think that Mr. Callard is right in his idea that the so- 
called flint implements obtained from the river gravel are natural, and not 
artificial, forms. I have suspected this to be the case for several years, but 
it is as yet by no means proved. The archaeologists will not listen to any 
such suggestion ; I therefore did not raise this question. 
My object, setting out with the artificial origin of these forms as a con- 
cessum, was to show that we have in the areas over which these implements 
are distributed in Europe, a clue to the date of the Glacial Epoch. The 
gravels in which they occur are admitted to be Post-glacial, and the imple- 
ments are therefore, of course, posterior in date to the close of the Glacial 
Epoch. Beyond a certain line in the north of Europe they do not occur : I 
undertook to show that this was due to the fact that palaeolithic man was 
kept out of Denmark and Scotland by the ice, and that man advanced into 
these regions when the climatic conditions permitted him to do so — namely, 
at the beginning of the Polished Stone Age. And I then pointed out that 
this gives us the date of the retirement of the ice in Denmark and 
Scotland— that it corresponded with the beginnings of Robeuhausen and 
Moosseedorf. 
But Mr. Callard here interposes the objection that these flints in question 
are not artificial in their origin, and would infer that the argument presented 
by me is, therefore, unnecessary, as well as unsupported by the fact assumed 
or accepted as true. 
If Mr. Callard is right in this view of the non-artificial origin of these 
flints (and I think it not improbable that future investigation will show that 
he is), then the antiquity of man ceases to be connected in any way with the 
age of the river-gravels, and we get rid of the most difficult point in this 
whole discussion.* 
* If these so-called implements were really manufactured by some primeval 
race of men, they ought to be found under varying conditions and in all locali- 
