GLACIAL MAN IN THE TRENTON GRAVELS. 23 



results. The easier explanation of the whole matter is that the 

 objects found by Dr. Abbott were not really in the gravels, but 

 that they are Indian shop-refuse settled into the old talus 

 deposits of the bluff, and that his eager eyes, blinded by a pre- 

 vailing belief in a paleolithic man for all the world alike, failed 

 to observe with their wonted keenness and power. 



But this case does not stand alone. The first discoveries of 

 supposed gravel implements are said to have been made when 

 the Pennsylvania Railway opened a road bed through the creek 

 terrace on the site of the present station. At first numerous 

 specimens of rudely flaked stones were reported, and the localit}^ 

 became widely known to archeologists, but the implement 

 bearing portions of the gravels — and this is a most significant 

 fact — were limited in extent, and the deposit was soon com- 

 pletely removed, the horizontal extension containing nothing. 

 At present there are excellent exposures of the full thickness of 

 the gravels at this point, but the most diligent search is vain, 

 the only result of days of examination being a deep con- 

 viction that these gravels are and always were wholly barren 

 of art. 



It thus appears that here as well as upon the river front, the 

 works of art were confined to local deposits, limited horizontally 

 but not vertically, and a strong presumption is created that the 

 finds were confined to redistributed gravels settled upon the 

 terrace face in the form of talus. Dr. Abbott states that "at 

 that point where I gathered the majority of specimens there is a 

 want of stratification.'.'^ It is well known that such rearranged 

 deposits are often difficult to distinguish from the original 

 gravels. In trenching an implement producing terrace at Wash- 

 ington — where the conditions were probably quite similar to 

 those at the Trenton railroad station — I passed through eighty 

 feet of redistributed talus gravels before encountering the gravels 

 in place, and so deceptively were portions of these deposits reset 

 that experts in gravel phenomena were unable to decide whether 

 they were or were not portions of the original formation 

 'Abbott, C. C. loth Annual Report of the Peabody Museum, p. 41. 



