476 BALCH— EARLY MAN IN AMERICA. 



Delaware with him and have thus had the advantage of having him 

 point out to me himself the three horizons. I have picked up nu- 

 merous Indian implements on the surface soil, perhaps the best of 

 which was a large arrowhead or spearhead which I detected in Ab- 

 bott's asparagus bed. And I have dug also into the second stratum, 

 the Yellow Sand Drift, and found a couple of rough argillite flakes 

 myself. An implement in the lower gravel horizon, however, I was 

 never lucky enough to find in situ, for these are exceedingly rare 

 and only reward a searcher after many long days. But I cannot 

 but marvel how anyone ever traced single-handed these three 

 archeological horizons. The two lower ones are so modest, so re- 

 tiring, that even when pointed out to you, it is hard to believe they 

 are there. And how Dr. Abbott, to whom they were not pointed 

 out, ever was able to recognize their existence and point them out 

 to others, seems to me the most wonderful discovery in the realm of 

 American archeology. 



The state of knowledge, it will be noticed, was precisely the op- 

 posite in Europe at the time of the discovery of paleolithic stone im- 

 plements there, from what it was in America at the time of the 

 discovery of paleolithic stone implements here. In Europe nobody 

 knew anything of a European stone age. In historic times, the 

 Greeks, the Romans, the Gauls, the Brits, had all used bronze or iron 

 weapons, but not stone weapons and implements. And the result 

 was that as soon as Boucher de Perthes had been proved correct in 

 his assertions that the flints he found were weapons and imple- 

 ments, everyone knew definitely that they were prehistoric : they 

 could not be anything else. In America on the contrary, everyone 

 knew that there was an American stone age, and that they were 

 still in it. And the result was that most archeologists in America 

 asserted for years after Abbott's discovery, that all the stone im- 

 plements found here are neolithic and historic. Nevertheless Ab- 

 bott was correct in his assertions and it may be truly said of him 

 that he is the Boucher de Perthes of America, the man who has 

 forced on science the recognition that there is a Paleolithic Amer- 

 ican man. 



Some years after Dr. Abbott's discovery a new worker appeared 

 in the Trenton district. This was Mr. Ernest Volk. He had come 



