Such, then, are some of the indications which have been assumed to point to the ancient presence of man in the New World. If we estimate this by historical, and not by geological periods, whatever proofs of his antiquity archæology may supply will be found to accord with other evidence; and especially with proofs furnished by the multitude of independent languages, and the diversity of types of race, ranging from the Arctic circle to Tierra del Fuego. But it would be rash to assume from the partial evidence yet obtained, that the juxtaposition of flint arrow-heads with the mastodon of Missouri, the pottery with bones and tusk of the same animal in the post-pleiocene of South Carolina, the human bones in the rich ossiferous caverns of the Brazils, or the flint implements, and human remains recovered from Californian and other auriferous drifts, unquestionably prove the existence of man on the American continent contemporaneously with the fossil elephant or the mastodon. The proofs hitherto adduced have been at best only suggestive of further research. There is no question that Dr. Lund visited that portion of Brazil lying between the Rio das Velhas and the Rio Paraopeba, with very important palæontological results. He there found a mountain chain of limestone rock, abounding with fissures and caverns; and from some of these calcareous caves he recovered, not only the bones of numerous fossil mammals imbedded in red earth, but also human bones which he pronounced to be fossil. The remains included not only those of sloths and armadillos of gigantic size, but also extinct genera of monkeys, all assumed to have been contemporaries of the fossil cave-men. But experience is teaching the palæontologist that the mere recovery of bones or implements from the same cave is no proof of contemporaneity. A cave which had been filled with cave-earth and bone breccia, together with extinct animals of the period of the _glyptodon_ and the _mylodon_, may in a long subsequent era have become the shelter or the place of sepulture of Indians.