San Antonio, Texas, 
Dec.10th, 1892. 
W.H•Holmes, Esq. 
My dear Holmes, 
I have just been reading your article in 
"Science” of Nov.25th, on Modern Qyiarry refuse and the Paleolithic 
Theory. It strikes me as about the most level headed article in 
n~- 
the anthropologic "nacket" I have seen for many a year. Your 
simple statement of the facts is such as to carry conviction with 
it by sheer force of good sense and to resist it looks like "biting 
a file". I wonder I never thought of that view of the situation 
before. We always do wonder when a simple sensible explanation 
comes forward to take the place of a complex overloaded hypothesis 
and no better evidence is wanted of the strength by of a hypothe¬ 
sis than its perfect simplicity and naturalness. 
And this reminds me that during the summer of *86 I was in 
Oregon on the western flank of the main mass of the "Three Sisters" 
high up. A little above was a large moving glacier. At the point 
I have in mind there was an old flow of obsidian very glassy and 
brilliant in fracture and containing in spots a great abundance of 
those lithophysae which Hague and Iddings have described from 
Yellowstone Park. I remember being very much puzzled at the time 
by seeing enormous quantities of sharp-edge^ flakes - iDiled up in 
