Paleolitli a)ui NcolitJi. — Claypole. 339 
and more general term to be used in relation to those of yet 
later date.* 
If, however, archaeologists in America continue the use 
of the term "palaeolithic" as descriptive of any of the imple- 
ments thus far reported from the United States the word 
should be employed in a restricted sense and should refer 
merely to the form and nature of the artifact without any 
expressed or implied reference to its date. Even then, how- 
ever, confusion is likely to arise and the illicit conclusion may 
be drawn that objects to which the same term is applied must 
be of corresponding age, — an inference which obviously would 
be a logical fallacy. 
Strong confirmation of the doctrine which assigns all the 
hitherto published "palaeolithic (?)" finds of North America 
to a much later date than that which is justly claimed for those 
of England is found in the comparative recency of their geo- 
logical setting^. With the exception of certain cases in the 
West no great changes in the physical geography of the coun- 
try have occurred, the rivers are in the same valleys, the sea 
coast has undergone merely trivial alteration and lakes, the 
signs of geographical youth, still thickly dot the glaciated 
region. So in England neolithic "finds" occur in similar 
conditions. 
But on the other hand since the days of palaeolithic man 
vast changes have taken place in England. Rivers have 
changed their courses or have cut down their channels by 
hundreds of feet; they have even in some cases been con- 
verted into arms of the sea; England has been, once at least, 
an integral portion of the European continent, and the whole 
drainage system in some parts of the island has been radically 
altered. No one can doubt that changes so great in the one 
case and so small in the other prove beyond controversy that 
the beginning of the palaeolithic era must be separated from 
our own by a time interval of which the neolithic era forms 
but a comparatively small fraction. 
*The term mesolith will probably be some day required for the 
transitional forms which will surely come to light in the progress of 
time between the typical palaeoliths and the typical ncoliths. Such a 
transition must have taken place and it is probable that in regions be- 
yond the reach of the ice the more advanced patterns and styles were 
in some degree contemporaneous with the earlier forms and may also 
he of glacial date. 
