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As to the lake-dwellings, they both imply in all that they write of them, 
that those of the Stone age go back some thousands of years before our era, 
— perhaps some 4,000 to 7,000 years, — but they are cautious about commit- 
ting themselves absolutely. 
As to the Danish shell-mounds, Lyell brings forward various considera- 
tions to show that they are “ very old ” ; he suggests that they may be 
16,000 years old. Sir John Lubbock makes them older than the Neolithic 
Age ; he calls them “ Pre-Neolithic.” 
Now, in the light of the investigations which have been made since the 
works of Sir C. Lyell and Sir J. Lubbock appeared, all this appears very 
extravagant, and we cannot help feeling that it is not fair to the public to 
be drawn into such wild and unwarranted opinions by our most eminent 
scientific men. It was in this spirit that I felt called upon in the foregoing 
paper, which I have had the honour to lay before this Society, to protest 
against the manner in which the human relics found in the auriferous gravels 
of California have been treated by distinguished American geologists. The 
names that I have given as endorsing or countenancing the opinion that the 
mortars and skillets found in these California gravels were manufactured by 
men with highly-developed skulls, in the Tertiary period of the geologists, are 
the highest among the scientific men of America. We are just authorita- 
tively told that “the existence of man in the Tertiary period seems now 
fairly established.” It is absolutely impossible that science shall command 
the respect to which it is entitled if it proceeds in this incautious spirit. It 
is a serious matter to be told that man was living in the Tertiary period, and 
the declaration ought not to be made lightly. 
I regret that I should have been construed to have sneered at Sir C. 
Lyell or Sir J. Lubbock, because I entertain for both of them the very 
highest admiration. 
I intended to point to them as warnings in these discussions about the 
antiquity of our race ; as teaching us by the errors into which they have 
fallen the necessity of more caution on this subject. Why, both Sir C. 
Lyell and Sir J. Lubbock mention, in their argument for the antiquity of 
man, the skeleton of the Red Indian found by Dr. Dowler in the delta of 
the Mississippi, “ beneath four buried forests of cypress-trees superimposed 
one upon the other,” and estimated by Dr. Dowler to be 57,000 years old. 
They also cite the human bones found in the coral rock of Florida, said by 
Agassiz to be 10,000 years old ; also the os innominatum of a man found 
with the bones of the mastodon in the Mississippi valley, near Natchez ; 
also the cone of the Tiniere, in Switzerland ; also the pottery found by Dr. 
Horner in the mud of the Nile, at the depth of 60 feet. Sir C. Lyell also 
brings forward certain antique boats found in the plain of the Clyde, 20 feet 
above high-water mark, which he regards as extremely ancient, but one of 
which had a hole in its bottom stopped by a piece of cork, which must have 
come from Spain or Portugal. Sir C. Lyell also brings forward the case of 
a raised beach at Cagliari, in Sardinia, where fragments of antique pottery 
YOL. XY. ' R 
