AMERICAN ASPECTS OF ANTHROPOLOGY. 155 



geological period finding on the Pampas the body of a glyptodon, 

 scooping out its flesh, setting up its carapace on the ground like a 

 monstrous dish -cover, and digging himself a burrow to live in under- 

 neath this animal roof ; but geologists have not accepted the account. 

 Even in the case of so well-known an explorer as the late Dr. Lund, 

 opinions are still divided as to whether his human skulls from the caves 

 of Brazil are really contemporary with the bones of megatherium and 

 fossil horse. One of the latest judgments has been favorable : Qua- 

 trefages not only looks upon the cave-skulls as of high antiquity, but 

 regards their owners as representing the ancestors of the living In- 

 dians. The high and narrow dimensions of the ancient and modern 

 skulls are given in the " Crania Ethnica," and, whatever a similarity of 

 proportions between them may prove, it certainly exists. Dr. Koch's 

 celebrated flint arrow-head, recorded to have been found under the leg- 

 bones of a mastodon in Missouri, is still to be seen, and has all the ap- 

 pearance of a modern Indian weapon, which raises doubt of its being 

 really of the mastodon period. This antecedent improbability of 

 remote geological age is felt still more strongly to attach to the stone 

 pestles and mortars, etc., brought forward by Mr. J. D. Whitney, of 

 the California Geological Survey, as found by miners in the gold-bear- 

 ing gravels. On the one hand, these elaborate articles of stone-work 

 are the very characteristic objects of the Indian graves of the district, 

 and on the other the theory that the auriferous gravels capped by lava- 

 flows are of Tertiary age is absolutely denied by geologists such as M, 

 Jules Marcou in his article on "The Geology of California" ("Bull. 

 Soc. Geol. de France," 1883). It is to be hoped that the section may 

 have the opportunity of discussing Dr. C. C. Abbott's implements 

 from Trenton, New Jersey. The turtle-back celts, as they are called 

 from their flat and convex sides, are rudely chipped from pebbles of 

 the hard argillite out of the bowlder-bed, but the question is as to the 

 position of the sand and gravel in which they are found in the bluffs 

 high above the present Delaware River. The first opinion come to, 

 that the makers of the implements inhabited America not merely after 

 but during the great Ice age, has been modified by further examina- 

 tion, especially by the report of Mr. H. Carvill Lewis, who considers 

 the implement-bearing bed not to have been deposited by a river which 

 flowed over the top of the bowlder-bed, but that, at a later period than 

 this would involve, the Delaware had cut a channel through the bowl- 

 der-bed, and that a subsequent glacier-flood threw down sand and 

 gravel in this cutting at a considerable height above the existing river, 

 burying therein the rude stone implements of an Esquimau race then 

 inhabiting the country. Belt, Wilson, and Putnam have written on 

 this question, which I will not pursue further, except by pointing out 

 that the evidence from the bluffs of the Delaware must not be taken 

 by itself, but in connection with that from the terraces high above 

 the James River, near Richmond, where Mr. C. M. Wallace has like- 



