development of herbivorous mammals, and we do not find in that part of 
the world the great diversity of mammalian life which is found in the Old 
World. But, supposing man did exist in those ages in the highly-cultivated 
condition referred to, who preceded him ? There must have been men of a 
lower grade, according to the view which many hold as to the development 
of man, and his remains ought to be found in beds yet earlier than these 
which are supposed to be tertiary ; so that in order to find the earliest man 
of all we should have to push our researches back to the oolitic period. We 
know that although the North American Indians, not only at the present 
time, but for a considerable number of centuries, have been in a semi- 
civilised condition, their civilisation has been of a very low order — that is to 
say, they have made either no very great use of metals or none at all. 
But, although this is the case, it has been pointed out in Dr. Southall’s 
paper and elsewhere, that there was a time — and that not so very long ago — 
when the North American Indians were in a far more civilised state than 
they are in at the present day. We find scattered over the greater part of 
North America great tumuli and mounds, and we have in these mounds 
apparent relics of civilisation among the Indian tribes of a far higher 
character than that which now prevails. It is also, I believe, a fact that, 
although we now find the greater part of America to be new forest land and 
waste, there was a period when the greater part of this forest district was to a 
certain extent cultivated; the mounds erected by the mound-builders, and by 
those who constructed those old tumuli, were in all probability the sites of cities 
and towns ; and we know for certain that there was a very considerable use 
made by those earlier tribes of certain metals, although the use of them 
seems to have died out. We know that copper was used, and probably 
lead and silver — copper, and occasionally silver, being found in the tumuli, 
while mines have been found near Lake Superior in which copper used to be 
worked. This shows that there is no reason why we should not look for the 
existence of men having a tolerable civilisation who were able to mine to a 
considerable depth in certain parts of America, at a period not so far 
removed from that of those mound-builders and, probably, contemporaneous 
with them. But I do not see any decided proof that the men whose 
remains are found in these gravels were by any means contemporaneous with 
the gravels themselves. If you find remains, unless those remains are found 
by competent observers, it is almost impossible to say for certain that the 
things found are contemporaneous with the gravels and have not been 
introduced since, because in the very nature of the section of a gravel-pit it 
is impossible to see any decided lines. In almost all cases it is impossible 
for those gravels to give any proofs of the existence of contemporaneity 
between the remains found and the gravels themselves. Suppose a mining 
level had been driven into those old gravels of the Rocky Mountain district, 
and supposing the mining level had fallen in, which I think, in many cases, 
would have undoubtedly taken place, then no trace whatever would be left 
of the existence of the level so driven. If theie had been timber props put 
