114 PREHISTORIC FISHING. 



Was there a palseolitliic age in North America ? 



During a number of years, Dr. Charles C. Abbott, of Irenton, New Jersey, 

 has published papers in which he describes rude implements found Vjy him in 

 the undistui'bed gravel-beds of the Delaware Valley at Trenton, and he finally 

 sums up his experiences, together with those of others, in the thirty-second 

 chapter of a late woi'k treating of the aboriginal relics of the northern Atlantic 

 sea-board of America. The implements in question resemble in shape moi*e or 

 less those from the drift of France and England ; yet while the latter consist of 

 cretaceous flint, the material of the New Jersey specimens is ai-gillite.'-' I have 

 seen but three of them, which were sent to me by Dr. Abbott, and these arc 

 unmistakably fashioned by the hand of man. They were all found, he informs 

 me, by himself in the gravel-bluff facing the Delaware River at Trenton, at a 

 depth of thirteen feet from the surface. "The purplish-colored one was under- 

 neath a boulder and could never have been above it, since the deposition of tlie 

 boulder." Dr. Abbott's illustrations of Trenton implements likewise leave no 

 doubt as to the artificial shaping of the originals. He admits that, "having been 

 seriously misled by the various geological reports that purport to give, in proper 

 sequence, the respective ages of the several strata of clay, gravel, boulders, and 

 sand, through which the river has finally Avorn its channel to the ocean-level, he 

 has probably, in previous publications, ascribed too great an antiquity to these 

 implements, although what is now known to be a substantially correct history of 

 the various deposits in the river-valley^ does not dissociate thesie traces of man 

 from a time when essentially glacial conditions existed in the upper valley of the 

 Delaware River, though they occurred subsequently to the existence of the great 

 continental glacier, when at its greatest magnitude. 



" It was not until the surface geology of the Delaware River Valley was 

 carefully studied by Mr. Henry Carvill Lewis, of the Second Geological Survey 

 of Pennsylvania, that we were in possession of all the facts necessary to enable 

 us to recognize the full significance of those early traces of man, discovered in 

 one of the latest geological formations of this valley."f 



The conclusions drawn by Mr. Lewis from his investigation are, that the 

 Trenton gravel is a true river-gravel, and is the most recent of all the formations 

 in the valley of the Delaware River ; that it is apparently post-glacial ; and that 

 the stone implements of paheolithic type, which this gravel contains, indicate the 

 existence of man in a rude state, at the time of its deposition.^ It remains to 

 be seen whether this is the last verdict in the case. 



* Only one spear-head-like implement of flint lias thus far been noticed. It was taken, within thi' city of 

 Trenton, from the gravel, at a depth of six feet below the surface. 



f Abbott: Primitive Industry : or Illustrations of the Handiwork, in Stone, Bone and Clay, of the Native 

 Races of the Northern Atlantic Seaboard of America; Salera, Mass., 1881 ; p. 471. 



J Ibid. ; p. 551. 



