370 



SCIENCE. 



[Voi,. II., No. 32. 



a great many sharp and long splinters.' They are 

 made of many different varieties of the quartz min- 

 eral; but the greater part appeai-s to have been tal<en 

 from quartz-bearing slate in the vicinity. Numbers 

 have evidently been formed from water-worn pebble's. 

 Objects shaped from some special variety or tint of 

 quartz were found generally together in loose groups 

 of two or three to a dozen pieces. Where a piece is 

 of large size, the chips surrounding it are usually 

 much smaller. , 



Professor Henry W. Haynes of Boston, to whom a 

 collection of the specimens was submitted, has Tvrit- 

 ten, that he believes some of them to be implements; 

 many, chips and refuse struck off in the work; many 

 are natural forms, and a few are rolled pebbles. 

 Those which he thinks are implements, he supposes 

 were held in the hand of the workman ; masses of 

 quartz were fitted for use by having most of their 

 projections battered off by another stone. He be- 

 lieves, also, that he has found traces of moss or 

 leaves being used to soften the roughness of these 

 implements when held in the hand. 



Mr. Warren Upham, assistant of the state geologi- 

 cal survey, contributed the following statement on 

 the subject, showing how man could live while the 

 modified drift was deposited, and how relics of his 

 work might be enclosed within that formation. He 

 says, — 



"As soon as the ice had so far retreated as to 

 uncover the present valley of the Mississippi river 

 in Morrison county, the deposition of the modified 

 drift, constituting the terrace-plain In which are 

 found the quartz chippings, ensued, during the con- 

 tinued retreat of the ice. It seems very probable, 

 that vegetation and animals followed close upon the 

 retiring ice-border; and that even man, who lived 

 near the Atlantic coast in this closing stage of the 

 glacial period, as abundantly proved by recent dis- 

 coveries in the drift-gravel near Trenton, N. J., may 

 also have lived here at that time, and occupied the 

 Mississippi valley directly after the ice-sheet retired. 

 While the deposition of the valley-drift at Little Falls 

 was still going forward, men may have lived there, 

 and left, as the remnants of their manufacture of 

 stone implements, the multitude of quartz fragments 

 here described. By the continued deposition of the 

 modified drift, lifting the river upon the surface of 

 its glacial flood-plain, these quartz-chips were deeply 

 buried in that formation. The date of this valley- 

 drift must be that of the retreat of the ice of the last 

 glacial epoch, from whose melting were supplied both 

 this sediment and the floods by which it was brought. 

 The glacial flood-plain, beneath whose surface the 

 quartz-fragments occur, was deposited in the same 

 manner as additions are now made to the surface of 

 the bottom-land; but the flooded condition of the 

 river, by which this is done, was doubtless maintained 

 through all the warm portion of the year, while the 

 ice-sheet was being melted away upon the region of 

 its head waters. In spring, autumn, and winter, or, 

 in exceptional years, through much of the summer, 

 it seems probable that the river was confined to a 

 channel, being of iusuflicient volume to cover its 



flood-plain. At such a time this plain seems to have 

 been the site of human habitations and industry, as 

 shown in this paper. After the complete disappear- 

 ance of the ice from the basin of the upper Missis- 

 sippi, the supply of both water and sediment was so 

 diminished that the river, from that time till now, 

 has been occupied more in erosion than in deposition, 

 and has cut its channel far below the level at which 

 it then flowed, excavating and carrying to the Gulf 

 of Mexico a great part of its glacial flood-plain, the 

 remnants of which are seen as high terraces or plains 

 upon each side of the river." 



An animated discussion followed the reading of 

 Miss Babbitt's paper. Mr. Putnam referred briefly 

 to the discoveries made by Dr. Abbott in New Jersey, 

 some of which are unquestionably artificial produc- 

 tions, and prove that man resided in that region 

 prior to the last glacial deposit, or, as some claim, 

 between two glacial deposits. The discoveries made 

 here seem to be of the same character as those in 

 New Jersey. Their age belongs to geologists to as- 

 certain. He considered the discovery very important, 

 and the paper one of great value. Rev. Mr. Peet 

 took issue with Mr. Putnam as to the value of the 

 discoveries, and thought, that, if paleotiths had to 

 depend upon such a shallow foundation as was fur- 

 nished by these alleged discoveries, the matter would 

 better be dropped. He thought there was absolutely 

 no evidence that the specimens discovered by Miss 

 Babbitt were the work of man, and was of the opinion 

 that the whole theory was without any foundation 

 whatever. 



A classification of the sciences. 



BY J. W. POWELL OF WASHINGTON, B.C. 



This is an endeavor to classify sciences in the order 

 of the evolution of phenomena, and with reference 

 to complexity. The first group of science, relating 

 to physics, the author divided into molecular, stellar, 

 and mechanical science. In the second group, the 

 biological sciences, he placed botany and zoology. 

 In the third group, anthropology, we have pyschol- 

 ogy, sociology, philology, technology, and philosophy. 

 Geology is a compound of the first group; paleon- 

 tology, of the second. 



The following subdivisions of the third group 

 were suggested: As branches of philology: 1. sign 

 language: 2. spoken language; 3. written language. 

 Under technology: 1. activital; 2. regulative; 3. 

 ethics. Under philosophy: 1. mythology; 2. raeta- 

 physic; 3. scientific. Technology is also either 

 industrial or aesthetic. The author explained in 

 further detail the reasons for this order of classifica- 

 tion, and the relations of the members of different 

 groups to each other. 



List of other papers. 

 The following additional papers were read in this 

 section, some of them by title only: An ancient 

 village of the emblematic mound-builders; caches 

 guarded by effigies; effigies guarding the village and 

 sacrificial places not far away; high places connected 



