If all the indications were verified, we should be justified in assigning man a much greater antiquity in the Rocky Mountain region and on the Pacific slope than in any other part of North America. Mr. E. L. Berthoud collected numerous stone implements in what he considers to be tertiary gravel on Crow Creek and in the region of the South Platte River, Lat. 40 N., Long. 104 W. Two shells secured in the same locality by him have been pronounced a _corbicula_ and a _rangia_ respectively, and are thought to belong to the older Pliocene or possibly to the Miocene.[143] The evidence in this case is, however, unsatisfactory, and cannot be admitted to be of scientific value without further authentication. In 1857 a portion of a human cranium was found associated with bones of the mastodon at the depth of one hundred and eighty feet below the surface in a mining shaft at Table Mountain, California. Dr. C. F. Winslow sent this fragment to the Boston Natural History Society, but no importance was attached to it, since no other evidence other than that furnished by workmen in the mine could be obtained. Subsequently, when an entire skull was reported to have been found in the gold drift near Angelos in Calaveras County, in a shaft one hundred and fifty feet deep, the intelligent portion of the community pronounced the finder guilty of a scientific fraud, and it is not yet a certainty that their decision was incorrect. However, Professor Whitney, of the State Geological Survey, upon hearing of the case examined the mine, and found that the shaft passed through five beds of lava and volcanic tufa and four beds of auriferous gravel. It was in one of these beds that the skull was said to have been found. Some of the cemented gravel was still adhering to the skull when it came into the Professor’s possession, and Professor Wyman, to whom it was submitted subsequently, refers to the difficulty which he had in removing the incrustation. Professor Whitney, on the testimony of the possessor of the skull, pronounced it an authentic “find,” and while his decision has been acquiesced in by a number of scientific gentlemen of repute, Professor Wyman among them, still the great majority, we believe, are unwilling to rest their faith on such slender evidence. Though no crack was apparent through which the skull might have fallen from the surface, such might have existed at an earlier period. In a region which is the product of volcanic action there is room for suspicion, especially in cases like both of these, where, as Sir Charles Lyell has said, no geologist was present at the moment of discovery to see the fossil _in situ_ and extricate it with his own hands from the matrix which contained it.