Of late years interest in the antiquity of man in America has been reawaked by the discoveries of human remains in Pliocene deposits in California, and the Glacial gravel of the Delaware at Trenton, New Jersey. Before this it was supposed that we had no authentic instance of human remains in America found under such circumstances that it was necessary to assign to them a profound antiquity. If these latter day discoveries be true, we can not escape the conclusion that man lived in America at as early a date as that indicated by any of the European explorations. Some hold that the proof of his existence here in Pliocene times is far more satisfactory than any evidence of his presence in Europe during this time. There is something fascinating in this belief. If some of the most eminent scientists of America are not mistaken, man lived on our Pacific coast before the great ice-sheets that pulverized the surface of the earth and dispersed life before them came down from the north. He ranged along the western rivers before the volcanic peaks of the Sierras were uplifted, and his old hunting-grounds are to-day buried underneath the greet lava flow which desolated ancient California and Oregon. But this assertion has not been allowed to pass undisputed, nor has it received the assent of all scientists. We can easily understand why scholars subject all questions relating to the first appearance of man to very careful scrutiny. If a competent geologist should assert that he had found, in undoubted Pliocene formations, bones of some species of animals not hitherto suspected of living at that date, his statement would be accepted as proof of the same. But in the case of man, every circumstance is inquired into. It is but right that the utmost care should be exercised in this direction. But, on the other hand, we are not justified in demanding mathematical demonstration in every case of the accuracy of a reported discovery. Yet such seems to be the position of a portion of the scientific world. For, although they willingly admit that man has lived on the earth for a very long time indeed, they urge all sorts of objections to extending that time into a past geological age.