investigate alone the wind and temperature apparatus on the roof in order to discover why we hear the bell ring instead of see the index move. But, rather he would extend his investigations to discovering how the "nerve" connections originated that now exist, and how the internal apparatus, to which they run, came to be so different that in one case we "see" and in the other "hear" from the same sort of incoming current.

Enabled by this illustration to look with greater clearness into Prof. James' hypothesis, and into some of its implications, we may now go back to the assertions that vastly different spheres of evolutionary influence would be involved as between this theory that these currents are alike and the rival theory that they are different, and to the assertion that certain consequences are logically demanded by the "alike" theory which are so contrary to existing facts that it must be discarded.

What has been neglected by Prof. James is, as I have said, the evolutionary or selective value of the sensory currents. If these currents were all alike, then, manifestly the molecular differences which we are obliged to assume in the cortex as underlying our different sensations would be cut off from all diversity of influence either from the end-organ processes or from the environmental forces. And this is the same as saying that they would be cut off from all selective relationship with these great spheres of influence, and that our end-organs and environment had nothing whatever to do with the origin of our different senses.

Now, it must not be too quickly inferred from these words in italics, that it would be impossible to account for the evolutionary selection of our several senses within the narrowed sphere of influences remaining after cutting off the peripheral and outer forces. Such an inference would not only be wrong but also would confuse and obscure certain considerations that we are to come to further on, and in view of which it is imperative for me to stop long enough here to point out that the sphere of Spontaneous Variation alone might be sufficient to account for the variety of our senses and their present external connections, if only their origin and not their preservation needed to be accounted for. And this is done in pointing out that these connections might be originally due wholly to the

period at which a spontaneous variation made a new kind of "sense energy" possible. Thus, the present connection of cerebral sight with the optic nerve and with the eyes, and with the light that falls on them, might well, for all we know to the contrary, be entirely due to the chance appearance of a new form of "energy" or molecular possibility in the cortex just at a time when the development of optic end-organs made a connection with the new cerebral development available, and the exigences of the outer environment made the new linkage of processes of service. Such a connection of inner sense to outer stimulus would be as accidental as anything can be, yet it might be adequate for explaining the facts of our problem were no influences to be considered that might disturb the permanency of such connections. And this brings us finally to the influences which most surely would have disturbed the permanency which actually has been maintained, had this theory that the sensory nerve currents are alike been really in force.

These disturbing influences become apparent when we consider the uniformity of the functions that would be left to central nervous processes under the conditions of this theory. No one has ever contended that the outgoing currents of the motor nerves are of diverse kinds. If, therefore, the incoming currents were also all alike, there would then be left to the central processes the entirely homogeneous switch-board function of connecting like currents with like currents. And, under such conditions, and cut off from all diversity of external influences, it seems scarcely possible that some one form of molecular activity or "sense energy" out of the many that variation may have given birth to or protoplasm been originally capable of, would not prove most suitable to this one purpose, and as a consequence become perpetuated to the exclusion of all other less suitable kinds of neural sense-forms. Or, put again more simply, since moleculur forms are sure to have been evolutionary determinants, therefore, if all the nerve currents were alike it seems certain that the cortical processes must also have become alike. And since this manifestly is not the case, therefore we must abandon Prof. James' theory.

(To be Continued.)

PINEY BRANCH (D. C.) QUARRY WORKSHOP AND ITS IMPLEMENTS.1

BY THOMAS WILSON.2

(Continued from page 885.)

II.

The first

Mr. Holmes' paper comprises 26 printed pages. part is occupied with a description and statement of facts; the second part is as I have shown made up of theory, assumption, opinion. I have examined them sufficiently to show their want of value. But the climax is reserved to the closing portion, for, commencing on page 19 and continuing 8 pages is a chapter relating to the age of the workshop and the race of the men who worked it. Mr. Holmes' conclusion is that though the quarry is prehistoric the age is not great and the race was the Modern Indian. This he argues with profundity, going into the racial question in detail and with great elaboration.

I decline to argue these propositions. I am appalled at the temerity as well as the dogmatism with which he decides these abstruse questions. He is a gentleman for whom I have the highest regard. I have known him well and favorably for many years. He has studied and written upon art products and art evolution and their relation with prehistoric man, in a philosophical and artistic strain which has done credit to his logic, and been as much benefit to art as to archæology. But Sir John Lubbock, Sir John Evans, Prof. Tylor, Sophus Müller, Hildebrand, Montellius, Naidallac, Hamy, de Mortillet and Cartailhac and the host of eminent Europeans, archæologists and anthropologists, of whom Keane is the latest author, who have spent their lives in the study of this science, 'Read before the Anthropological Society, Tues day Evening, December 4, 1894.

2 Curator of Prehistoric Anthropology, U. S. National Museum, Washington, D. C.

have not ventured upon the determination of these questions of prehistoric ages and races. with the confidence of Mr. Holmes, and certainly they do not decide these important questions with even a fraction of the satisfaction and certainty which seems to have inspired him.

Mr. Holmes did not content himself with the things of today which he saw in the quarry, but turned his mind's eye back when the quarry was being made and depicts it in the time of antiquity, with apparently as much certainty as if he had been then and there present. He not only describes the work with the detail and positiveness I have shown, telling the periods to which it belonged and the race and culture of the men who did the work, but he assumes to decide upon the objects not there. He determines not only upon what was left in the quarry, but he decides with equal positiveness upon the ultimate purpose and intention of the workman and the future use and destination of the implements which had been transported elsewhere.

* * *

He describes in several places the leaf-shaped blade-the "third stage" of his process-straight and symmetrical, with edges as slightly beveled as consistent with strength, less than half an inch in thickness and shown in i to p, Pl. IV (my Pl. XIX), and says "when they were realized, the work of this shop was ended" (XX), "they, and they only, were carried away to destinies we may yet reveal " (p. 13). "No examples of the successful quarry products were left upon the ground " (p. 15). "All forms available for further shaping or immediate use were carried away as being the entire product of the shop for final finishing" (p. 15). "This was a stage of advancement which made them portable and placed them fully within reach of processes to be employed in finishing, and that they had been carried away to the villages and buried in damp earth (cached), that they might not become hard and (or) brittle before the time came for flaking them into the forms required in the arts. The history of the quarry forms is not completed, however, until we have noted their final distribution among the individuals of the various tribes, until we have witnessed the final step in the shaping process—the flaking out of specific

forms with a tool of bone-and their final adaptation to use and dispersal over the country," (p. 18).

"Having reached a definite conclusion that the blades were the exclusively worked product of the quarry," he "was led to investigate their subsequent history" (p. 18). The italics are mine. His investigation into the subsequent history of these objects led him to define a cache. "A 'cache' is a cluster or hoard of stone implements, numbering, perhaps, a score or more, secreted or deposited in the earth and never exhumed. Such hoards are frequently discovered by workmen in the fields," (p. 18).

Pursuing the "subsequent history" of these implements, I propose to go into the region round about Piney Branch, examine the aboriginal village sites of the District of Columbia, the fields containing these alleged secret hoards or caches, and the known places of aboriginal occupation within the neighborhood where these implements were said to have been carried, and see what have actually been found there, what of caches, what of leaf-shaped blades, and what of implements which had been subjected to the (fourth or other) "processes to be employed in finishing, when they were flaked into the final forms required in the arts" (p. 18), and I propose we compare the the objects actually found in these distant places, with what Mr. Holmes said would be found.

I look through my Department in the National Museum for the leaf-shaped implements which, according to the theory of Mr. Holmes, were made at Piney Branch and carried out to the homes of the Indians, their makers, in the District of Columbia, and I find the numbers insignificant; while, as to caches, the Bureau of Ethnology, through Prof. Cyrus Thomas, has lately made a catalogue of the "Known Prehistoric Works in the Eastern United States," among them deposits, hoards, or caches, and there is not a single cache reported from the District of Columbia, this, despite the statement of Mr. Holmes that" such hoards are frequently discovered by workmen in the field."

In the settlement of these questions, it is of high importance that so far as possible, facts and not guesses should be given.