108 Th eA mMePriCan Geolog ist. February, 1892 
and on his return to prepare a carefully studied article on Prehis- 
toric Man (including the question of Preadamites) for McClintock 
and Strong’s Cyclopedia, it was late in the summer before he could 
sit down to the work. Still again, in a few days, he was 
interrupted to deliver lectures before the ‘‘Convention” at Clear 
Lake, Lowa. 
After a careful examination of his former work he was con- 
vinced that the only satisfactory course to pursue, though on an 
enterprise already three times begun, was to begin again. The 
whole scheme of the work was cast anew; and before his departure 
for Syracuse, in the latter part of November, he had completed 
about 121,500 words. 
At Syracuse, where his term of service began, on Noy. 21, his 
popular course of weekly lectures consisted of seven, written on 
the primitive history of ‘‘world-life.”” In the course of these 
lectures he advanced the original idea that the meteoric matters 
now known to be disseminated through space, may be adequate to 
cause, by their resistance, the anomalous acceleration cbserved in 
the orbital motions of the satellites of Mars—especially the inner 
one. The same conception was subsequently advanced by Prof. 
Doolittle, of Washington, and Dr. Winchell made reclamation 
through the New York Tribune, inasmuch as his own views had 
been announced in public lectures in Syracuse, Cleveland and 
Lebanon, O., and Richmond, Tl., and had also been reported in 
the daily papers of Syracuse. Prof. Doolittle very cheerfully 
acknowledged Prof. Winchell’s priority. 
The study of Preadamites had deeply interested him, and had 
produced a pretty firm conviction that men existed upon the earth 
before the biblical Adam. He had planned, therefore, to deliver 
a lecture at Syracuse, upon the subject of Adamites and Pread- 
umites. This lecture he was requested urgently to deliver in one 
of the churches, and he did so. At the request of the clergymen 
present the lecture appeared in full in one of the next morning's 
papers. Ina day or two the author was called upon by Rey. Dr. 
Warren, editor of the Northern Christian Advocate, with a request 
to write half a dozen articles on the same subject, for his paper. 
To this request he acceded, but had not proceeded beyond No. 3 
before Dr. Warren desired him to extend the series to eight, and 
before this limit was reached the editor wished the series extended 
to ten. At the request of the assistant editor, J. T. Roberts, 
