THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



gates. In addition to the ancient human remains which have 

 been found in Cahfornia, Iowa, Nebraska, Mississippi and IIH- 

 nois, discoveries have been made during the last fifteen years in 

 a so-called interglacial gravel deposit along the Delaware River 

 near Trenton, New Jersey, which have indicated a very high an- 

 tiquity for man in America. Prof. F. W. Putnam laid before the 

 Congress the results obtained by the careful and extensive inves- 

 tigations of Ernst Yolk in the Trenton gravel during the last ten 

 years, illustrating his remarks with the articles obtained, which 

 are now in the American Museum. The most important discov- 

 eries consist of the remains of several skeletons which were un- 

 earthed in the summer of 1899. They lay beneath two feet of 

 black clay and five feet of yellow and greenish-yellow sand, 

 belonging to the glacial deposits, and containing all the indica- 

 tions of glacial action. The black bed is considered to belong to 

 the time during which the ice-front made its first retreat. The 

 bed of sand shows thin, easily-recognized streaks which vary in 

 color from white to greenish-yellow, clear yellow and dark yellow. 

 Inasmuch as these bands nowhere show any succeeding disturb- 

 ance, it follows without question that the skeleton reached the 

 place in which it was discovered before the laying down of the 

 sand bed. Furthermore, south of Trenton, there has been ex- 

 humed from a sand bed a left human femur in the vicinity of 

 which there was also discovered an elk bone and fragments of 

 bones of the musk-ox. In addition to these there were found 

 several pieces of stone which showed indubitable evidence of 

 human workmanship, so that now it can no longer be doubted 

 that the fact has been established that America was inhabited 

 by men during Glacial time. How many thousand years ago 

 this period may have been is a question which cannot yet be 

 answered with certainty, but it may well have been between 

 10,000 and 20,000 years. 



In March of the present year there were discovered in the vicin- 

 ity of Lansing, Kansas, a human skull and some other bones which 

 lay from 19 to 20 feet below the surface of the ground and 69 feet 

 from the mouth of the tunnel the digging of which led to their 



