Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 42.djvu/798

776 previously quoted. We are familiar with the Newcomerstown flint, and can challenge the production of any reject from the neolithic refuse-heaps, or indeed of any fac-simile that could mislead a real expert on either continent. We are giving no opinion here on its nature or on its relation to the gravels in which it is found. We simply protest against the assumption by any one of the right to deny the competence of the oldest and most careful observers in favor of his own innuendo and without a tittle of evidence. It is idle to tell us that "gravels reset," that "flints may be introduced after deposition," that "stones may be broken by Nature so as to simulate the work of man," etc. All this we know, but we ask the reason for suspecting that these things have happened here and without detection. Without this the objections are mere insinuations from men who will not admit that others know more than themselves; effusions of the "omniscients" in the garb of "agnostics," if we may be pardoned for borrowing the style of the Emerald Isle.

We scarcely agree with some of the critics that it is unadvisable to take the public into confidence until final and positive results are obtained. This, again, savors too much of officialism. The reading part of the public is interested in the work of discovery not less than in the outcome, and is able and willing to watch its process. Prof. Wright was advised against publication by the "head of the glacial division," on the ground of the immaturity of the investigation and the liability to teaching the public erroneous views. The ready sale of The Ice Age in North America, now in its third edition, is a proof that the public was ready and the time ripe, and few who have read it with ordinary care can fail to grasp the real condition of the problem. We think that any reader who deduces final and positive conclusions from the book has read it to little purpose. Suspense of judgment is not a state of mind congenial to the untrained or always found in the trained, but this must be the mental attitude of any reader of the work in regard to the great problem of which it treats. Anxious regard for the public is entirely supererogatory.

Moreover, if justification for such publication of incomplete work were required, it may readily be found in the example of the "head of the glacial division" himself, who very soon after his appointment published in the Second Annual Report a map of the terminal moraine of the second Glacial epoch. How incomplete this was may easily be seen by any one who will take the trouble to compare it with the latest work in the same field. Moraine after moraine has been added outside the terminal moraine,