164 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



upon its cutting edge ; and, what is of special significance, that it 

 had been sharpened not by the more modem processes, described 

 by the speaker in a previous paper, in which the chips were 

 broken from the edge by pressing against it with a piece of bone, 

 but by the older process of striking against the edge with another 

 stone. The type of the implement also was pronounced by Mr. 

 Gushing to be the earliest known, although from the convenience 

 of the form it has always continued in use. It was one, however, 

 which appeared at the very dawn of human development. 



Thus the circumstantial evidence connected with the imple- 

 ment itself confirms in a remarkable degree the direct evidence 

 respecting it. And it deserves to be placed, as it doubtless will 



Fig. 5. Face View Fig. 6. Face View. Fig. 7. Diagonal View 



OF THE Implement. of Siiakpened Edge. 



be, among the most important discoveries heretofore made con- 

 necting man with the Glacial period. 



In closing, I can not refrain from a few remarks concerning 

 the conditions of life at that period, especially since the prolonged 

 visits which I have made to the retreating ice front in Alaska 

 and in Greenland have rendered it so much easier for me to believe 

 in glacial man than it would have been without those experi- 

 ences. The neighborhood of the ice border during the Glacial 

 period was probably not an uncomfortable place in which to live. 

 Even in Greenland, where there is no timber, the Eskimos manage 

 to live in a great degree of comfort, and that too with no imple- 

 ments but those of stone and bone which they have made with 

 their own hands. The importation of firearms and of iron imple- 

 ments has been of doubtful advantage to the Eskimos. From all 

 accounts, they flourished better before their contact with Euro- 

 peans than they have since. 



Substantially the same may be said of the tribes in Alaska. 

 There the conditions are in one respect even more closely similar 

 to those which existed on the Delaware and Ohio Rivers where 

 the remains of glacial man have been found in America. Like 



