54 DR. DANIEL WILSON ON 
locality such as this; where the river has again brought to light rude implements that 
characterise an almost primitive people? But, assuming that the various implements 
fashioned by a strictly pre-glacial people have been totally destroyed by the crushing forces 
of the glacier, and that the specimens now produced were not brought from a distance, may 
they not be referred to an early race that, driven southward by the encroaching ice, dwelt 
at the foot of the glacier, and during their sojourn here these implements were lost ?”* 
The opinions thus set forth in the first published account of Dr. Abbott’s discoveries, 
have since been considerably modified, in so far as the geological age of the tool-bearing 
gravel of the Delaware valley is concerned. In his earlier publications, he assumed as no 
longer questionable, the existence of inter-glacial, if not pre-glacial, man on this continent. 
In his more matured views, as set forth in his “ Primitive Industry,” he speaks of “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 worn its channel to the ocean level ;’} so that he has 
probably ascribed too great an antiquity to the peculiar class of stone implements brought 
to light in the river-gravels of New Jersey. Dr. Abbott, accordingly, now states as his more 
matured conclusion, confirmed by the reports of some of the most experienced geological 
observers, on whose judgment he relies, that the Trenton gravel, in which alone the turtle- 
back celts have thus far been found, is a post-glacial river deposit, made at a time when 
the river was larger than at present; and is the most recent of all the formations of the 
Delaware.f Here, however, the term “recent” is employed altogether relatively ; and al- 
though Dr. Abbott no longer claims in the discovery of the stone implements ofthe gravel 
beds near Trenton, New Jersey, evidence of the existence of man on the American continent 
before the close of the Glacial period, he still refers the Trenton gravel tool-makers to an 
era which, at the lowest computation precedes by thousands of years the earliest historical 
glimpses of Assyria, Egypt, or wherever among the most ancient nations of the old world 
the beginnings of history can be traced. 
The disclosures of Dr. Abbott claim a special importance among the fruits of archæo- 
logical research on this continent from the fact that they furnish the first well-authenticated 
results of systematic research based on the scientific analogies of European archeology. 
For it is well for us to bear in remembrance that the evidences of the antiquity of man in 
Europe do not rest on any number of chance disclosures. It is a simple procedure to dig 
into a Celtic or Saxon barrow, and find there the implements and pottery of its builders. 
But archeologists have learned to recognize the paleeolithic implements as not less charac- 
teristic of certain post-pliocene deposits than the paleontology of the same geological 
formation. The river-drift and cave deposits are characterized by traces of contemporaneous 
life, as shown in the examples of primitive art from which they receive the name of the 
tool-bearing drift or gravel; just as older geological formations have their characteristic 
animal, and vegetable fossils. The specific character of the tool-bearing gravel of the 
French drift haying been determined, geologists and archeologists have sought for flint 
implements in corresponding English strata, as they would seek forthe fossils of the same 

* Report of the Peabody Museuut, Vol. II. p. 38. 
+ Primitive Industry, p. 471. 
Ÿ Ibid, p. 542. 
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