196 
depth of 38 feet, by Dr. H. H. Boyce, at Placerville ; (6) 
numerous stone relics, mortars, grooved disks, &c., at various 
depths. We may add that bones of the camel, rhinoceros, 
hippopotamus, and extinct horse, or of allied forms, occur 
in these gravels. 
In his address before the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science, at Saratoga, N.Y., Aug., 1879, 
Professor 0. C. Marsh, of Yale College, President of the 
Association, had the following passage : — 
“ Important evidence has likewise been adduced of man's 
existence in the Tertiary, both in Europe and America. The 
evidence to-day is in the form of the presence of man in the 
Pliocene of this country. The proof offered on this point by 
Professor J. D. Whitney in his recent work (Aurif. Gravels 
of Sierra Nevada ) is so strong, and his careful, conscientious 
method of investigation so well known, that his conclusions 
seem irresistible. Whether the Pliocene strata he has ex- 
plored so fully on the Pacific coast corresponds strictly with 
the deposits which bear that name in Europe, may be a 
question requiring further consideration. At present, the 
known facts indicate that the American beds containing 
human remains and works of man, are as old as the Pliocene 
of Europe. The existence of man in the Tertiary period 
seems now fairly established." 
This is pretty explicit. Man existed in America in the 
Tertiary period, and, what is yet more startling, it is not the 
savage of the Palaeolithic epoch of Europe, but it is the man 
of the Neolithic period — the respectable barbarian of the 
Lake-Dwellings. We are called upon by the first scientific 
authorities in the United States to believe that, before the 
mantle of ice which destroyed the fauna of the Tertiary age 
was spread over Northern Europe and America, man existed 
in the western part of North America in such a condition of 
advancement (we might say, perhaps, civilisation) that he 
worked in the hardest stone, and fabricated out of the obdurate 
granite mortars and dishes of perfect form, weighing from 
20 to 40 pounds, and 12 inches in diameter. He also used a 
vessel (described as a “ skillet") made out of a lava “hard 
as iron," which was circular in form, and had three legs and 
a spout ; and polished stone axes, perforated to receive a 
handle, and “ ladles " of steatite, and various other stone im- 
plements exceedingly difficult to manufacture, as, for example, 
the perforated discoidal disks or quoits found at Gold Springs 
Gulch and elsewhere. 
It is a fact, says Mr. Bancroft (who, however, equally with 
Prof. Whitney, believes in the vast age of these objects), that 
6 
