NEW EVIDENCE OF GLACIAL MAN IN OHIO. 163 



The northern tributaries of the Ohio had both these advantages 

 (or disadvantages), and therefore they have the terraces. On the 

 Ohio these are always larger and higher where a tributary comes 

 in from the glaciated region to the north, as, for example, at the 

 mouth of Big Beaver Creek, where the terrace is a hundred and 

 thirty feet above low- water mark. But down the river the sup- 

 ply of gravel diminished, and the terrace becomes correspondingly 

 lower, being at Steubenville and Brilliant only seventy or eighty 

 feet above low water. 



I have personally examined every stream emerging from the 

 glaciated area from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River, 

 and can testify that everywhere substantially the same system of 

 gravel terraces marks them as that which characterizes the Ohio 

 and its tributaries. Without doubt they were formed during the 

 closing stage of the period, when both great torrents of water and 

 vast deposits of glacial debris were periodically released by the 

 melting ice sheet. 



So far as direct evidence is concerned in estimating the age of 

 implements in these terraces, it relates to the question whether or 

 not they have been found in undisturbed strata of the original 

 terrace. If they are so found they are as old as the deposition of 

 the gravel which took place in glacial times ; for since that period 

 of deposition the action of the present river has been confined to 

 eroding an inner channel, such as is shown in Fig. 3, and to work- 

 ing over the gravel within the limits of its own flood-plain. No 

 disturbances by present floods could affect the gravel of the 

 eighty-foot terrace. That has remained constant from the time 

 of its original deposition. 



The direct evidence, therefore, regarding this implement would 

 seem to be as clear and positive as it is possible to be. Relying 

 upon the strength of this, I took the implement to the meeting of 

 the American Association for the Advancement of Science at 

 Springfield, Mass., in August last with great confidence. Nor was 

 this misplaced. On being submitted, at a joint meeting of the 

 Geological and Anthropological Sections, to Prof. F. W. Putnam, 

 Mr. F. H. Gushing, Miss Alice Fletcher, and others, the corrobo- 

 rative indications of its antiquity were readily and emphatically 

 recognized. 



Prof. Putnam remarked upon the distinctness with which it 

 retained the patina indicative of the conditions in which it is said 

 to have been found, and said without hesitation that the imple- 

 ment in itself bore evidence of being a relic of great antiquity. 



Mr. Gushing remarked that there could be no question that it 

 was a finished implement, and not a " reject " ; and that not only 

 had it been finished by careful chipping all along the edge, but 

 it had been finished twice, having been at least once resharpened 



