// inchell Memorial 81 



thenceforward one of the assistants of the Minnesota survey six 

 years, until 1885, and again in 1893 and 1894. In the meantime 

 and later, while I was an assistant geologist of the surveys of 

 the United States and Canada, on the exploration, mapping, and 

 publication of the Glacial Lake Agassiz, which occupied the 

 basin of the Red river and of lakes Winnipeg and Manitoba, my 

 frequent association with Prof. Winchell kept me constantly well 

 acquainted with the progress of his Minnesota work. Since 

 the spring of 1906 he had been in the service of the Minnesota 

 Historical Society, having charge of its Department of Archaeol- 

 ogy. During all these thirty-five years I had intimately known 

 him, and had increasingly revered and loved him. Besides being 

 a skilled geologist, Newton Horace Winchell was a good citizen, 

 a Christian in faith and practice, beloved by all who knew him. 



Among the many special investigations which Prof. N. H. 

 Winchell published during the forty-five years of his active work 

 as a scientist, author, and editor, none probably has been more 

 widely influential upon geologic thought and progress than his 

 studies and estimates of the rate of recession of the Falls of 

 St. Anthony, cutting the Mississippi river gorge from Fort Snel- 

 ling to the present site of the falls in Minneapolis. This investi- 

 gation, first published in 1876, gave about 8,000 years as the 

 time occupied by the gorge erosion, which is likewise the ap- 

 proximate measure of the time that has passed since the closing 

 stage of the Ice Age or Glacial period, when the border of the 

 waning ice-sheet was melted away on the area of Minnesota. 



Artificially chipped quartz fragments and rude aboriginal 

 implements found in the Mississippi valley drift at Little Falls, 

 in central Minnesota, belonging to the time of final melting of 

 the ice-sheet there, and other traces of man's presence at nearly 

 the same time, or even much earlier, in numerous other localities 

 of the southern part of our great North American glaciated area, 

 have led Professor Winchell and others, as the late Hon. J. V. 

 l>rower, Professors G. F. Wright and F. W. Putnam, and my- 

 self, to a confident belief that mankind occupied this continent 

 during the later part of the Ice Age, or even quite probably 

 much earlier in that period, and possibly even before our con- 

 tinental glaciation began. This very interesting line of investiga- 

 tion was the theme of the last paper written by Professor Win- 



