Lah 
this geological horizon, is one of extreme interest. It is that of 
the Nampa image brought up in boring an artesian well, in Ada 
County, Idaho, through a lava-cap, 15 feet thick, and below it 
about 200 feet of the quicksands and clays of a silted-up lake, 
formed in a basin of the Snake river which joins the Columbia 
river, and flows into the Pacific, forming part, therefore, of the 
same geographical and drainage system as the Californian gravels. 
At this depth the borer came down to a stratum of coarse sand, 
mixed with clay-balls at the top, and resting at the bottom on an 
ancient vegetable soil, and the image came up from the lower part 
of this coarse sand. The borer, or liner of the well, was a six- 
inch iron tube, and the drills were only used in piercing the lava, 
while the sands below it were all extracted by a sand-pump. Mr. 
Kurz, a respectable citizen of Nampa, who was boring the well, 
states that he had been for several days closely watching the pro- 
gress of the well and passing through his hands the contents of 
‘the sand-pump as they were brought up, so that he had hold of 
the image before he suspected what it was. Mr. Cumming, 
superintendent of that portion of the Union Pacific Railway, a 
highly-trained graduate of Harvard College, was on the ground 
next day and saw the image, and heard Mr. Kurz’s account of the 
discovery ; and Mr. Adams, the president of the railway, happen- 
ing to pass that way about a month later, brought it to the 
notice of some of the foremost geologists in the United States, 
from an article by one of whom, Mr. G. F. Wright, in the Century 
Magazine, this account is taken. The image was sent to Boston 
by Mr. Kurz, who gave every information, and it was found to be 
modelled from stiff clay, lize that of the clay balls found in the 
sand, slightly, if at all, baked by fire, and incrusted like these 
balls with grains of oxide of iron, which Professor Putnam con- 
siders to be a conclusive proof of its great antiquity. Mr. 
Emmons, of the State Geological Society, gives it as his opinion 
that the stratum in which this image is said to have been found 
is older by far than any others in which human remains have 
been discovered, unless it be those under Table Mountains, in 
California, from which came the celebrated Calaveras skull. So 
much for the authenticity of the discovery, which seems unassail- 
able ; but now comes the remarkable feature of it, which toa great 
extent revolutionises our conception of this early paleolithic age. 
The image, or rather statuette, which is scarcely an inch and a 
half long, is by no means a rude object, but on the contrary more 
artistic, and a better representation of the human form than the * 
little idols of many comparatively modern and civilized people, 
such as the Phenicians. It is, in fact, not unlike the little 
statuettes which are found in the earliest remains of Egyptian 
or Chaldean art, as anyone may judge who cares to stay when the 
reading of this paper is concluded, and look at the drawing on 
a page of the magazine from which this account is taken. But if 
