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without traversing extensive cold and mountainous tracts quite prohibitory to a strictly primitive naked man of tropical origin, unless such transit were made in the early part of the Tertiary era before the development of cold northern climates and before the erection of the modern mountain systems. The early Tertiary, however, was an era of submergence rather than of elevation and land connection, and the possibility of such migration is extremely doubtful. Primitive man cannot well be supposed to have gained access to America by water until he had learned the art of navigation, or, in other words, until he had reached a somewhat advanced state of civilization. The strong presumption is, therefore, that man came to America only after he had attained to a stage of development much beyond the primitive one. It would appear that he must have become possessed of the power of protecting himself from the vicissitudes of climate and of securing the means of living under adverse conditions, or else had acquired the arts of navigation to an extent that would permit him to cross from the one continent to the other in warm latitudes.

As man's full evolution did not, therefore, probably take place on this continent, a complete series of relics of that evolution cannot be looked for here. Hence a system of interpretation of fossil relics which is based upon a theory of complete evolution here or which presumes the existence here of a complete series of relics does not carry inherent force, but rather the contrary. It is more probable that the oldest fossil relics of man on this continent represent, not a primitive, but some advanced stage of evolution. There is no inherent reason for expecting to find "paleolithic" or any other very primitive stage of culture here, however well demonstrated that stage may be on the eastern continent. To establish the existence of that stage here, unquestionable geological evidence, strong in itself and quite independent of theoretical support, must be produced. The geological problem in America will be greatly clarified when it is recognized that its solution must rest on strict stratigraphical and palæontological grounds, and not on any parallelism with a