290 The A)ncrican Geologist. ^^^'' '^^^'^• 
2. The recognition of the geest which hcs on the rock and 
rises three or four feet ahove it, and the derivation of the 
water-laid silt layer by wash from the geest. 
3. The impossibility of the Missouri river and the tribu- 
tary creek being in erosive contact on the floor of the tunnel 
at low water, since Wisconsin glaciation, or flowing at a higher 
level than at present, and hence the impossibility of there hav- 
ing been at the mouth of the creek any Wisconsin terrace, or 
post- Wisconsin floodplain forty-two feet more or less above 
the present floodplain. 
All the rest of the writer's discussion foregoing is simply 
attendant on the establishment of these points, necessitated by 
the glittering phantasma of Pleistocene geology involved in 
the establishment of the other hypothesis. 
Some argument has been drawn in favor of the recentness 
of the burial from the resemblance of the skull to those of the 
present Indian, and from the freedom of the skull and bones 
from encrustation. 
In reply it may be remarked that not only is there a tend- 
ency amongst glacialists to shorten the lowan ice-epoch, but 
to unite it rather closely in time with the Wisconsin. The 
date of the Wisconsin being generally approved, as about 8000 
years ago, and the lowan probably not more than 8000 years 
older, it appears- that man may have acquired the physical 
characteristics of the Indian at that comparatively recent date. 
The burial of the skeleton, as represented by the discover- 
ers, in the non-calcareous geest, overlain by an impervious silt 
layer that intercepted the downward passage of calcareous 
w^ater from the loess above, is perhaps sufficient to account for 
the non-calcareous condition of the bones. 
Since the publication of professor Chamberlin's paper, pro- 
fessor W. H. Holmes has discussed the same subject in the 
American Anthropologist (vol. 4, pp. 743-752, Oct. — Dec, 
1902), and has followed the argument and reached the con- 
clusions announced by professor Chamberlin. He could hard- 
ly do otherwise. It is a geological rather than an anthropo- 
logical investigation, as the essential data are involved in geo- 
logic science. 
