Existence of Man in North America during the Palæolithic Period of the Stone Age,” by Mr. Thomas Wilson of the National Museum at Washington.[59] It may still be a question whether the Palæolithic age of the New World is equally remote with that of the eastern hemisphere. The date approximately assigned thus far to the American Palæolithic era is, geologically speaking, recent; and on that very account adapts itself to other favoured assumptions, such as the supposed Eskimo pedigree derived from the race of Europe’s Reindeer period. This chimes in with the old idea of the American antiquary that the _Skrælings_ referred to in the Eric Saga were Eskimo, as is far from improbable, though the assumption rests on no definite evidence. Dr. Abbott accordingly reproduces the statement of Professor Dawkins, in confirmation of the revived belief. “We are without a clue to the ethnology of the river-drift man, who most probably is as completely extinct at the present time as the woolly rhinoceros or the cave-bear; but the discoveries of the last twenty years have tended to confirm the identification of the cave-man with the Eskimo.” Such a fanciful hypothesis once accepted as fact, its application to American ethnology is easy; and so Dr. Abbott proceeds to appeal unhesitatingly to evidence sufficient “to warrant the assertion that the palæolithic man on the one hand, and the makers of the argillite spear points on the other, stand in the relationship of ancestor and descendant; and if the latter, as is probable, is in turn the ancestor of the modern Eskimo: then does it not follow that the River-drift and Cave-man of Europe, supposing the relationship of the latter to the Eskimo to be correct, bear the same close relationship to each other as do the American representatives of these earliest of people?”[60]