199 
It appears to me that this is an abundant explanation of all 
these mortars and spear-heads which have been found at 
great depths in Table Mountain and elsewhere in California, 
and it is a matter of great astonishment to me that such men 
as Whitney, Marsh, and Winchell should on such evidence 
rashly assert that “ the existence of man in the Tertiary 
period seems now fairly established/'’ and that not only Le 
Conte, but even Dana, in the last edition of his incom- 
parable Manual of Geology , should deem it worth while to 
incorporate such discoveries in their chapters on the antiquity 
of man. 
I may add to what has been said that Lesquereux refers 
some of the fossil plants found in the gravels described to the 
Miocene period, so that we might fairly infer, if Marsh is 
correct, that the human race in California is as old as the 
beginning of the Pliocene — the contemporary of the three- 
toed Anchithermm and the Hipp avion or Pvotohippus , whose 
saddles and bridles we may yet hope to find if the skillets, 
and dishes, and mortars we have been considering were manu- 
factured at that time. 
The animal remains found in the lower gravels under the 
basalt also belong to the Miocene age. 
With regard to the Calaveras skull, Professor Whitney ob- 
serves, that “ it presents no signs of having belonged to an 
inferior race. In its breadth it agrees with the other [modern] 
crania from California, except those of the Diggers, but sur- 
passes them in the other particulars in which comparisons 
have been made.” “ Man,” he says, “ existing at that remote 
time .... was still the same as we now find him to be in 
that region.” 
What becomes, then, of the doctrine of Evolution ? If the 
human skull was exactly the same at the beginning of the 
Pliocene, or the close of the Miocene, that it is now ; on the 
theory of evolution, how shall we explain the absence of all 
progress or change ? and what margin of time is there for 
man's development from the generalised lemurs of the Eocene ? 
There is no doubt whatever that the confirmation of Professor 
Whitney's opinion as to the age of this skull would be fatal 
to the evolution theory. 
I append a few cuts of the mortars and other objects found 
in the gold gravels of California, and which are believed by 
the mine are two large chambers from 10 to 20 feet high, and double 
that number of feet in breadth. Stones, bones, skulls, and gold were found, 
the value of the latter being about 900 dollars. A further investigation will 
be made.” 
VOL. XV. 
I' 
