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VIIITHE ANTIQUITY OF MAN IN NORTH AMERICA 1Ancient Shell Mounds Man Coeval with Extinct Mammalia Man in theGlacial Period Palaeolithic Implements in North America TheAuriferous Gravels of California Fossil Remains under the AncientLava Beds Works of Art in the Auriferous Gravels Human Remainsin the Auriferous Gravels Concluding Remarks on theAntiquity of Man.OVER a considerable portion of the northern hemisphere theremains of man, or his works, have been found inassociationwith bones of the extinct mammalia which characterised theGlacial epoch, and no evidence has been obtained that manat that time differed more from modern savages than theydo among themselves. The facts which prove this antiquitywere, when first put forth, doubted, neglected, or violentlyopposed, and it is now admitted that such opposition wasdue to prejudice alone, and in every case led to the rejectionof important scientific truths. Yet after nearly thirty years'experience we find that an exactly similar prejudice prevails,even among geologists, against all evidence which carries manone little step farther back into pre-Glacial or Pliocene times,although if there is any truth whatever in the doctrine ofevolution as applied to man, and if we are not to adopt theexploded idea that the Palaeolithic men were specially createdjust when the flood of ice was passing away, they must havehad ancestors who must have existed in the Pliocene period,if not earlier. Is it then so improbable that some trace ofman should be discovered at this period, that each particle ofevidence as it arises must be attacked with all the weapons of1This article appeared in the Nineteenth Century, Nov. 1887.2F