FOSSIL MAN. 261 



brought from the up-river region by a single 

 winter's accumulation of ice. As the river and 

 its shores are to-day, so they were a century 

 ago perhaps for many centuries ; but the 

 winter of our varying year is a mere puppet- 

 show compared with what New Jersey winters 

 once were, and the culmination of arctic rigors 

 gave our Delaware Valley, in that distant day, a 

 far different aspect ; and, with each succeeding 

 glacial flood, more and more sand, gravel, and 

 great bowlders were rolled down from the rock- 

 ribbed valley beyond and spread upon the open 

 plain through which the present stream unruffled 

 flows. 



The land was somewhat depressed then, and 

 the water flowed at a higher level, but nothing 

 unfavorable to man's existence obtained in the 

 whole region. As a skilled geologist has point- 

 ed out, "The northern ice was one hundred 

 miles away, and did not prevent primitive man 

 from assembling about the low and hospitable 

 shores of the miniature sea, . . . and over the 

 bosom of the bay, little affected by tide because 

 of its distance from the ocean, and little dis- 

 turbed by waves because of its shoalness, palae- 

 olithic man may have floated on the simplest 

 craft, or even have waded in the shallow waters." 

 Ay ! may have ; but did he ? What evidence is 

 there that that most primitive of mankind, who 



