264 The American Geologist. ^^^' "o^. 
of mind. He inade a soniewliat careful and prolonged study 
of the environment and of the materials in which the skeleton 
la}'. He has elsewhere given the result of that study.* He 
was compelled, by the evident force of the circumstances, to 
assign the skeleton to glacial time, and more definitely to pre- 
lowan time. The materials in which the skeleton lay are of 
the nature of geest. The material overlying Jhe geest is up- 
land loess, of the mixed nature of much of the upland loess 
in southwestern Minnesota and in Iowa, formed contemporary 
with the lowan ice-epoch, but showing some of the effects of 
the prevailing waters of the valley in which it was deposited. 
It is not the writer's intention to review the evidence on which 
that conclusion is based. 
Since the writer reached that conclusion, however, profes- 
sor Chamberlin has published in the Journal of Geology,'\a. re- 
markable paper on "The Geologic relations of the human relics 
of Lansing, Kansas,"' to which the wn-iter will here give special 
attention. He has no desire nor interest, nor any predetermin- 
ation to subserve in sustaining the pre-Glacial (pre-Wiscon- 
sin) or the post-Glacial age of the Lansing skeleton. He wishes 
simply to contribute somewhat to the correct interpretation of 
the facts l)earing on the age of the Lansing skeleton. 
In the discussion alluded to, by professor Chamberlin, oc- 
cupying thirty-four pages of the Journal of Geology, the first 
ten pages are occupied by an illustrated introduction and an 
''academic statement"' of the operation of scour-and-fill in river 
bottoms, concluding with the following: 
If excuse for this academic statement is needed it is found in its 
special "application to the case in hand ; for either action of the kind 
just set forth is to be accepted as an ehicidation of the case, as in the 
preferred interpretation that follows, or it is to be shown incompetent 
for such elucidation before we permrt ourselves to go back of this 
action to earlier agencies. It is a vital principle of good practice that 
the agencies and phenomena nearest at hand be first considered, and if 
the case requires, be eliminated before recourse be had to more remote 
agencies. This is peculiarly true when, as in this case, the agencies 
closest at hand have quite certainly swept away the most of a more 
ancient record in making their own. 
The ten pages devoted to scour-and-fill, if they have no 
application to the case in hand, as appears to the writer, can 
* Presidential address, G. S. A., Washington, 1902. Bulletin, vol. xiv. 
t October-November, 1902, pp. 74.'> 779. Published about December 18. 
