One great trouble with those remains is that they were not discovered by professed geologists. We have to depend upon the statements of miners. But if their statements can be believed (and why should they not?), there is no doubt about their genuineness. The testimony, as Mr. Whitney says, “all points in one direction, and there has never been any attempt made to pass off on any member of the survey any thing out of keeping, or—so to speak—out of harmony with what has been already found, or might be expected to be found. It has always been the same kind of implements which have been exhibited to us, namely, the coarsest and the least finished, which one would suppose could be made, and still be implements at all.”13 This result would hardly be possible, where so many parties are concerned in furnishing the evidence, if the objects were not genuine.14 In opposition to this conclusion it has been urged that the stone mortars, pestles, etc., have become imbedded in the gravel by the action of streams, or slips from the mountain side in modern times, or are the results of interments or mining operations.15 As an illustration of how they might become buried by the action of streams, reference is made to somewhat similar discoveries in the tin-bearing streams of Cornwall (Wales). We know with considerable certainty that at a very early date the Phœnicians worked in the gravels of these streams for tin ores. Implements made use of by them and others—such, for instance, as shovels, mortars, pick-axes, stone bowls, and various dishes—have been found at all depths in this gravel, by more modern miners.16 This may explain the presence, in some instances, of similar remains in California, but it utterly fails to do so, where the remains have been buried underneath a lava flow or a bed of volcanic materials, as is the case in many of the instances we have cited. Manifestly no water has disturbed their strata since the volcanic materials were laid down. Neither can we think of a land-slide carrying these remains into the heart of a mountain, or burying them underneath a hundred feet of lava. The peculiar position in which they were often found is surely lost sight of by those who think they might have been placed there by interment. We can not think of a savage people digging a grave in such a position.