"Students of the Ice Age will read with interest a paper by Mr. N. S. Shaler on the antiquity of the last glacial period, submitted to the Boston Society of Natural History, and printed in the latest instalment of the Society's Proceedings. Mr. Shaler differs decidedly from those geologists who suppose that the end of the glacial period is probably not very remote from our own day. One of the strongest of his arguments is derived from the distribution of the vegetation, which in America has regained possession, by migration, of the glaciated district. We must conceive, he points out, that as the ice retreated and gradually disappeared from the surface, a considerable time elapsed before existing forests attained their organization. He assumes as certain that the black walnut and the pignut hickory, between Western Minnesota and the Atlantic coast, have advanced, on the average, a distance of 400 miles north of the ancient ice front to which their ancestors were driven by the presence of the glacial sheet. For several reasons he believes that the northward progress of these forms must have been due mainly, not to the action of streams or tornadoes, but to the natural spread of the seed from the extremities of boughs, and to the carriage of the seed by rodents. But allowing for every conceivable method of transportation, he argues that a period of ten or even twenty thousand years is wholly inadequate to account for the present distribution of these large-seeded trees. If they occurred only sporadically in the northernmost part of the field they occupy, their implantation might be regarded as due to chance action. The fact, however, that they extend from the Atlantic to Minnesota indicates that the advance was accomplished by causes of a general and continuous nature." We have now to adjust our time-telescope to a wider range, and see what the Quaternary or glacial period teaches us as to the antiquity of man. The first remark is, that if the post-glacial period is much longer than that for which we have historical records, the glacial exceeds the post-glacial in a far higher proportion. The second, that throughout the whole of this glacial period, from its commencement to its close, we have conclusive evidence of the existence of man, and that not only in a few limited localities, but widely spread over nearly all the habitable regions of the earth. The first point has been so conclusively established by all geologists of all countries, from the time of Lyell down to the present day, that it is unnecessary to enter on any detailed arguments, and the leading facts may be taken as established. It may be sufficient, therefore, if I give a short summary of those facts, and quote a few of the instances which show the enormous lapse of time which must have elapsed between the close of the tertiary and the commencement of the modern epoch.