Editorial Comment. 117 
The Director has given the facts regarding his connection 
with the image and it is now easy to see the utter inaccuracy 
of the story as related by at least one of the critics in the 
American Anthropologist and in the Literary Northwest. 
Nothing more is needed to destroy the value of that attack. 
One word should be added with regard to this image. It is 
not quite fair to speak of it in connection with so-called pal- 
aeoliths as if it were classed with them. No one has put 
forward such a claim. Both it and the Californian relics, if 
all genuine, are manifestly of different type from any palaeo- 
lithic implements or utensils, and Prof. Wright, in his book, 
has given due prominence to this fact, dwelling at length on 
the recency of the lava now and its erosion. The error lies in 
the assumption that the glaciation in California was contem- 
poraneous with that of the eastern states, a point on which 
Major Powell's language is not sufficiently guarded. 
We observe that the case on which Prof. Wright lays the 
most stress as having come under his own observation — the flint 
from the Newcomerstown gravel — is not so much as referred 
to in the article. Possibly the writer felt in regard to it as 
one of his fellow disputants now feels. The following lines 
which recently appeared in Science are exceedingly signifi- 
cant : 
"The critical scrutiny of the evidence of palaeolithic man 
in North America, which has lately occupied considerable at- 
tention, has perhaps been pushed too far. When, as in the 
Ohio field, discoveries have been made which cannot be gain- 
said, it is scarcely fair to prefer every conceivable explanation 
of them to the simplest one — that the articles were originally 
deposited where found." (Science, 23-6-93, p. 341.) 
Contrasting this with the language of the same writer, a 
few months ago, we note an important change of opinion. 
We quote his own words: 
"Dr. Wright's next examples are the finds of rough imple- 
ments in the glacial gravels of Ohio by Dr. Metz,Dr. Cresson 
and Mr. Mills. The first two are eminent arclneologists, but 
neither is a geologist. Not one of the finds, therefore, is con- 
clusive." (Science, 28-10-92, p. 249.) 
Yet not a tittle of additional evidence lias been published 
in the interval. 
