Page:The Journal of geology (IA journalofgeology11893univ).pdf/214

The publication of Professor Wright's Man and the Glacial Period has been the occasion of much discussion concerning some of the questions with which the book deals. The numerous and somewhat elaborate reviews have criticized adversely many points in the volume; and in spite of the fact that Professor Wright has responded to most of the reviews, and in spite of the fact that both reviews and responses have been reviewed with loud professions of disinterested impartiality, it can hardly be claimed that any specific criticism of the book has been really met. The errors which have been pointed out, some of them trivial, many of them fundamental, still remain. The unjust claims and the misrepresentations of the volume deserved the measure of criticism they have received.

It was especially the author's handling of the evidence concerning the sequence of events in the glacial period, and concerning man's antiquity in terms of geology, which occasioned the somewhat prolonged discussion. Professor Wright is certainly entitled to his opinion on both these questions, as on all others. So far as we know, this right has not been disputed. The point of criticism at the outset was that the author did not fairly represent the present state of scientific opinion on these two questions, in a book which especially professed to set forth the present status of the problems with which it dealt. The justice of the criticisms made on this basis can not be questioned. The attitude of the reviewers, or at any rate the attitude of those who called forth the discussion, was not so much that there were two or more glacial epochs, though they indicated that this was their belief, as that the author had failed to adequately present the evidence bearing on the question, and had left the discussion on this point in such shape as to mislead the public, for