452 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. L. No. 1298 



have had but one. The railroad station at 

 Trenton is twenty or twenty-five feet below 

 tlie surface of the gravel and for years the 

 railroad was continuously at work in ex- 

 cavating the gravel for ballast until they had 

 removed many acres, thus exposing new per- 

 pendicular faces of the gravel for inspection 

 every day for several years. As it is the 

 early bird that catches the worm, so it is the 

 early observer who notes the facts, and Dr. 

 Abbott was such an observer. Every day for 

 years, and sometimes two or three times a 

 day, as he went to and fro, he observed these 

 excavations, and his eye soon became trained 

 so that no facts could escape his observation. 



At the same time Mr. Volk was engaged 

 for twenty-two years, not only in observing 

 excavations made by other parties but in 

 personal excavations in which many acres 

 were dug over to a depth of about four feet, 

 and everything carefully observed and noted. 

 Mr. Volk's investigations were at last re- 

 warded by the discovery of part of the shaft 

 of a himian thigh bone, seven feet and a half 

 below the surface, where there had been no 

 disturbance of the strata. He photographed 

 ithis in place; and isoon after, in the same 

 stratimi, found fragments of a cranium. A 

 recent lecturer of high reputation as an 

 anatomist has attempted to discredit this last 

 discovery of Mr. Volk on two considerations, 

 first that he was too much of an enthusiast 

 to make accurate observations; and secondly 

 that this bone is of the type of the modern 

 Indian and therefore could not be so old as 

 glacial gravels are supposed to be. 



In answer to this it is sufficient to refer the 

 reader to Mr. Volk's report just mentioned, 

 which is all in the most plain and matter-of- 

 fact style and is accompanied by one hundred 

 and twenty-five plates made from his photo- 

 graphs. If ever I associated with an in- 

 vestigator who attempted to state facts just 

 as he saw them, it was Ernest Volk. The 

 principal reason for discrediting Mr. Volk's 

 discovery is a theoretical one which is far 

 from being established. The critic thinks the 

 bones belong to a race more recent than the 

 glacial deposits. But in the first place, there 

 are current grossly exaggerated estimates as 



to the date of the close of the Glacial period. 

 The Swedish geologists are producing incon- 

 trovertible evidence that it is less than 7,000 

 years ago since the ice retreated from south- 

 ern Sweden; and there is a respectable 

 number of geologists of wide experience in 

 this country who think they have conclusive 

 evidence that the close of the Wisconsin 

 epoch in America occurred less than 10,000 

 years ago. In the second place Dr. Keith, 

 the leading comparative anatomist of Eng- 

 land, maintains that present types of the 

 liimian skeleton go back in Europe to very 

 much earlier times than can properly be 

 assigned to the Trenton gravel. The per- 

 manence of racial peculiarities is by no 

 means a settled question. Instead of denying 

 facts on the basis of a theory involving a 

 rapid rate of change in specific anatomic 

 characteristics, facts should be allowed to 

 modify the theory. 



There is also abimdant circumstantial evi- 

 dence of the most positive kind sustaining 

 the testimony of Dr. Abbott and Mr. Volk. 

 For example, with two or three exceptions 

 (which prove the rule), all the artifacts re- 

 ported by them as found in the Trenton 

 gravels below the disturbed surface of ten or 

 twelve inches are of palaeolithic type and 

 made from argillite; while in the upper ten 

 or twelve inches innumerable artifacts are 

 found of modern Indian type, chipped from 

 flint and jasper, with an occasional piece of 

 pottery. This proves conclusively that the 

 argillite implements belong to the original 

 stratification of the gravel. Ifo reason can 

 be given for intrusive burials of argillite that 

 would not be accompanied also by flint and 

 jasper. Some, however, had supposed that 

 these argillite fragments had worked down 

 into the lower strata through the decayed 

 roots of trees, or through holes made by 

 burrowing animals, or through disturbances 

 of the soil by the overturning of trees, or 

 through cracks in the soil that occur in dry 

 weather. All these theories have been urged; 

 but this soil does not crack in dry weather, 

 and the argillite fragments are larger and 

 lighter than the flint and jasper and would 

 not so readily follow down the cavity of 



