EARLY MAX L\ AMERICA 185 



of argillite and quartz, at various depths m undisturbed gravel, also the bones 

 of Arctic animals such as musk ox and of elk, probably species now extinct, 

 but which were contemporanef)Us with the man whose remains are found 

 in the same deposit. And finally, in Xoxember, 1899, after so man3' years 

 of search the work was crowned by the finding of human bones in the same 

 glacial fleposit where the bones of Arctic animals were found. The find 

 consisted of a fragment of the left femur of a human skeleton. The cellu- 

 lar structure had been gouged out, one end cut off and two holes were drilled 

 into the sides of the bone, which indicates that the same may have been the 

 handle of a tool or weapon at some time in the remote past and removes 

 any possibility for doubt: not only was it a luunun bone, but it was also a 

 sample of man's handiwork. All animal matter had gone out of the bone 

 and the whole was water-worn and rounded off at the ends, and of the con- 

 sistency of chalk. Some fragments of the parietal l)one of a human cranium 

 were also foimd in the same deposit and were of the same consistency as the 

 femiu". 



The fact that these finds were made in undisturbed gravel deposited by 

 the glacial floods shows that the home of these people had l)een somewhere 

 farther up the ^■alley, and that the objects shared the joiu-ney of the gravel 

 down to the place where they were now found, that they were a part of this 

 gra\el and as old as the deposits they were found in, m hate\er the age of 

 the gra\'el may be. 



We have here now the traces of tin-ee distinct habitations of man in the 

 Delaware Valley: the Indian on the present surface, the black soil; some 

 prehistoric man when the yellow soil was the surface prior to the accumu- 

 lation of the black soil, and as this man used only argillite in the manu- 

 facture of his implements, he may be termed the "argillite man"; and 

 finally a still older race before the yellow loam was deposited, the so-called 

 "glacial man" or " gra\el num." 



Howe\'er important these facts may be, they are at their best only 

 meagre information antl it is hoped that much more can be learned through 

 future explorations. Continued search must re\eal still other facts on which 

 to build the history of man on the American continent. 



Most of the specimens mentioned which go to prove the three periods 

 of occupati(jn in the Delaware Valley are on exhibition in the American 

 Museum of Natural History, and the explorations were made possible by 

 or through the generosity and interest of Dr. Frederick E. Hyde of New 

 York City and of the Duke of Loubat. 



