Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

128 THE LEGENDS.

moths of the Diluvial period, have multiplied, and by their multiplication give cumulative confirmation to each other. Even in the lower strata of the Miocene (the middle Tertiary) important discoveries of stone knives and bone-cuttings haye been made, as at Thenay, department of Marne-et-Loire, and Billy, department of Allier, France. Professor J. D. Whitney, the eminent State geologist of California, reports similar discoveries there also. So, then, we may believe that before the last great upheaval of the Alps and Pyrenees, and while the yet luxuriant vegetation of the then (i.e., in the Tertiary period) paradisaic climate yet adorned Central Europe, man inhabited this region.” *

We turn to the American Continent and we find additional proofs of man’s pre-glacial existence. The “ American Naturalist,” 1873, says :

“The discoveries that are constantly being made in this country are proving that man existed on this continent as far back in geological time as on the European Continent ; and it eyen seems that America, really the Old World, geologically, will soon prove to be the birthplace of the earliest race of man. One of the late and important discoveries is that by Mr. E. L. Berthoud, which is given in full, with a map, in the ‘Proceedings of the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences for 1872,’ p. 46. Mr. Berthoud there reports the discovery of ancient fire-places, rude stone monuments, and implements of stone in great number and variety, in several places along Crow Creek, in Colorado, and also on several other rivers in the vicinity. These fire-places indicate several ancient sites of an unknown race differing entirely from the mound-builders and the present Indians, while the shells and other fossils found with the remains make it quite certain that the deposit in which the ancient sites are found zs as old as the Pliocene, and perhaps as the Miocene. As the fossil shells found with the relics of man are of estuary forms, and as the sites of the ancient towns are on extended

* “ Popular Science Monthly,” April, 1875, p. 682.