AN ANCIENT DUNE. 59 



and there is no significant inhumation of a surface-lying specimen. 

 A notable example of this non-disturbance is shown in caches of 

 chert or basalt blades, which have lain undisturbed near the sur- 

 face, just as placed by aboriginal man, until cultivation of the soil 

 or other interference by man brought them to light. Again, were 

 frost an inhuming agent, how is it that stone mortars weighing from 

 ten to fifty pounds do not gradually sink with each winter's freezing 

 and thawing? I have passed over these relic-bearing fields when I 

 sank " knee-deep " in the mud, but this pressure of the foot was a 

 matter of twelve or fifteen inches actually and explained by the 

 weight of my body, but a mortar or even a stone axe of five or six 

 pounds ought gradually to sink deeper and deeper in sands when the 

 frost has melted, but we never find them at any svich depth as the 

 lower compact sand of the "yellow drift," except perhaps in some 

 deep pit, the definition of which is clearly shown by the dark discol- 

 oration and unmistakable boundary line. But, there, at such sig- 

 nificant depth, we do find rude basalt and argillite artifacts of incon- 

 siderable weight, usually less than an ounce, yet as distinctly the 

 output of man's skill as the most elaborate production of the his- 

 toric Lenape. 



The single explanation of the presence of the characteristic arti- 

 facts of the yellow sands lies in the suggestion that they are as old as 

 the containing bed and were made at the time or earlier than its 

 deposition as now obtaining, be the agency of distribution either 

 wind or water. That these traces of early man are intrusive objects 

 is simply impossible, and this applies equally to the palaeolithic im- 

 plements of the Kansas gravel, through which the Wisconsin Ice- 

 age floods have washed the present channel of the Delaware River. 



