holmes] a urifero us gra vel man i 09
gradually reaching the ears of the outer world, that relics of man were found in these gravels, and controversies arose in which the religious press took a lively part, combating the idea that traces of man could be found in formations that antedated the days of Adam, as these gravels evidently did. Mr C. D. Voy of Oakland, Dr Perez Snell of Sonora, and others collected various relics reported to have come from the gravels, and secured some data relating to their origin ; but the matter was never brought to a focus until Professor Whitney became interested in the dis- coveries and in the early sixties began with his assistants to visit the district and to collect and collate the scattered but remarka- ble observations.
Whitney's researches and conclusions
Professor Whitney found that the gold-bearing gravel deposits were, in the main, very old ; that their formation began at least in middle Tertiary time and continued down to the end of the Pliocene period, and in fact in varying degree down to the present time. Examining the evidence with the utmost care, he found it impossible to avoid the conclusion that many of the relics of man and his arts came from those portions of the gravels that could with reasonable certainty be assigned to the Pliocene ; that these finds were associated with the remains of extinct species of ani- mals and plants ; that they represented a race of ordinary physical characters, though having a culture of the lowest range compati- ble with the human status. He pointed out that a prominent feature of the evidence was its coherency ; coming from a multi- tude of independent sources and from widely distributed locali- ties it all pointed in one direction. There was no suggestion of the manufacture of evidence and no apparent motive for decep- tion. The observations were all those of miners, but a " long chain of circumstantial evidence is frequently more convincing than a single statement of an [expert] eye witness." 1 Since
1 Auriferous Gravels % p. 260.
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