FOSSIL MAN. 



275 



merits were the descendants of palaeolithic man, 

 and his superior in so far as a knowledge of the 

 bow and arrow and rude pottery indicates. Be- 

 yond this, perhaps, we can not safely venture. 

 Prof. Haynes has recently observed, " The palaeo- 

 lithic man of the river gravels at Tren.ton and 

 his argillite-using posterity the writer believes to 

 be completely extinct." While this at present 

 seems to be the generally accepted conclusion, 

 there is a phase of the subject that merits con- 

 sideration. May not this " argillite-using " man 

 have been a blood-relation of existing Eskimos ? 

 To accept the view of Prof. Haynes that " argil- 

 lite " man became extinct infers an interval of in- 

 definite length, when man did not exist on our 

 central Atlantic seaboard ; but if we may judge 

 from the abundant traces of man that have been 

 left and of the relation as to position that these 

 three general forms palaeolithic, later argillite, 

 and Indian bear to each other, it would ap- 

 pear that, in the valley of the Delaware, at least, 

 man has not for a day ceased to occupy the 

 land since the first of his kind stood upon the 

 shores of that beautiful river. 



By referring these intermmediate people to 

 the existing Eskimos, I would not be understood 

 as maintaining that these boreal people were di- 

 rectly descended from the argillite-using folk of 

 the Delaware Valley, but that both were derived 



