The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-02-03
SKULLS AND SCIENCE.

From the NJ y. Tribune.
Chicago has done it at last The last re-
proach upon our flag is wiped off, aud tho
city of divorce and bitches is our redeemer.
AS a nation our youth has always been the
one damned spot that would not out. The
taint of vulgar newness has rested on our
rivers and our mountains, as we'll as our
ideas and our manners; and Chicago has no
doubt felt the burden with peculiar bitter
ness. We may have jibed her with her late
birth ourselves Any feather-headed foreigner
had the prerogative of age to jeer at us.
Whether we choked Rebellion or sounded
our RS through our nose, we were liable to
be patted on the back and suavely reminded
that we were young, and that things were not
so done in the older countries over the sea.
Could we deny it? Jonathan could stretch
his mighty limbs as he pleased, brag of his
giants strength, his shrewd brain, his
yearly conquests; yet he was painfully
conscious all the time that he was
the hobble-de-hoy among nations = the
unlocked sohool-boy with whom nobody dared
TO try wrestle, but who could be stung into
fury by sneer. Consequently he has koo-
tooed and salaamed before every travelling
seribbler or story-monger, fearful that he
would be dismissed by them to the ounces
stool for some solecism in manners or pro-
nunciation. To be sure, we did what we
could to make ourselves q descent and an
antiquity. The New Englanders kept the
dead bones of the Pilgrim Fathers stalking
abroad in the sight of all men. Philadelphia
has never buried William Penn; in New York
we made what capital we could out of Hen
dirk Hudson; and Virginia families headed
by the Lees, console themselves to-day for
their empty pockets and missing slaves by
squabbling about whether their visionary
coats-o f-arms should be moons with untitled
horns or rampant squirrels
But Chicago has come to the rescue. She
has discovered skull in Calaveras county,
California, and named it in her Academy of
Sciences, which proves the American to be
not the youngest son of Time, but the un-
named ancestor of Time itself. The Euro
pean scientific journals receive the report of
the discovery with breathless awe. "The
spot from which the skull was taken, they
say, ''the lowest offour deposits of auriferous
gravel, over which were five successive beds
of lava and volcanic tufa, refers it to the PHO
cene or the age before the volcanic eruptions
which cover a great part of the State, pre-
ceding that of the mastodon, elephant, and
other great pachyderms. This remarkable
discovery, then, if placed beyond doubt, car
ries back the presence of man in America to
period even more remote than that inferred
from the stone implements in the drift of
Abbeville and Amiens in the valley of the
OOuIne, OF tne QuInAu bK6leIOn III UQo lOeSS OF
the Rhine" Various conjectures follow as to
the effect of this discovery upon future science.
But what do we care for future science?
We are no longer like Melchisedec, with
out father, mother, or descent. The
past is ours. The first dead Yankee has gone
down to be crowned king in Hades ''Hell
from beneath is moved to meet him at his
coming: it stirreth up the dead for him, even
the chief ones of the earth" Talk of your
Norman blood, of old Castilian, or the ancient
Latin races! When grey-haired Saturn was
babe in swaddling clothes, this great pro-
genitor of ours had left life, old as Age itself,
to see what profit could be made in the realm
of ghost. When the modern Adam first
looked about the newly-fashioned world, this
ancient Jonathan nodded good luck to him
out of the land of shadows. Ages before he
had discovered, invented, tested the world,
and all that was in it, and found it to be but
vanity and vexation of spirit. The ages since
have heaped dead races over his resting place,
who, being dead, rest in quiet and make no
sign. But, true to his nature, he comes
nosing his way back, and thrusts his deshless
jaws among his descendants, to see what new
thing they have found out at this late hour
of the day. He has brought us dignity among
the nations. Henceforth the Goddess of
Liberty shall keep him in sight of them cheek
by jowl with herself. ''Here she and Time
shall sit. Here is her throne: let kings come
bow to it.