116 PREHISTORIC FISHING. 



gravels at Trenton, New Jersey, present a most striking resemblance to what I 

 have seen in the various localities in the Old World to which I have referred. 

 There is the same rudely-stratified mingling of coarse materials marked by a 

 similar absence of clay. It is true that in the gravels of New Jersey thus far 

 not many fossil bones have been discovered, but only a few of the mammoth, the 

 bison, the reindeer, and the walrus, some of which, like the animals of Europe 

 under similar circumstances, have since migrated to the colder regions of the 

 north. But the fact remains that fossil animal bones have actually'' been dis- 

 covered in these gravels, and when we call to mind to what a limited extent they 

 have as yet been examined, we may reasonably expect more to be found hereafter. 



"I limit myself to a general statement like this in regard to the marked 

 resemblance of the locality, and the precisely similar character of the gravels at 

 Trenton, New Jersey, to what I have seen in man^^ localities in Europe, which 

 have yielded true paljeolithic implements, and I leave in more competent hands 

 the discussion and determination of the true geological character of the gravels 

 of the Delaware Valle}'. 



"Speaking then merely from an archa?ological stand-point, I do not hesitate 

 to declare my firm conviction that the rude argillite objects found in the gravels 

 of the Delaware River, at Trenton, New Jersey, are true palaeolithic imple- 

 ments."* 



This is certainly a strong vindication of Dr. Abbott's claims. 



I have elsewhere expressed my belief that man is an exotic element in 

 America ; but that the present American continent received its first population 

 at a very remote period, when, perhaps, the distribution of land and sea was 

 diiferent from what it is now. The earliest immigrants, I further stated, may 

 have been so low in the scale of human development that they lacked the faculty 

 of expressing themselves in articulate language, as it is difficult to account in 

 another way for the totally diverse characteristics of the numerous linguistic 

 families of America. 



In accordance with these views, I do not deem it improbable that implements 

 analogous in character to those of the European drift should occur under cor- 

 responding circumstances in North America. 



I cannot express a similar opinion Avith regard to "pliocene" man in 

 America. Admitting, for instance, the correctness of the reports on the polished 

 stone implements said to have been taken from a bed of Table Mountain in 

 Tuolumne County, California, older than the European drift, it would follow 

 that man lived in America in a polished-stone age, before the contemporary of 



* Huynes : The Argillite Implements found in the Gravels of the Delaware River, at Trenton, N. J., com- 

 pared with the Palseolithic Implements of Europe ; Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History ; Vol. 

 XXI, January 19, 1881 ; p. 136, etc. 



