678 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1888. 



filled the gaps with uew facts, formulated all, and hope I have estab- 

 lished their bearing one upon another, and thus proved (to my own 

 satisfaction, at least) the general occupation of the United States by 

 man during the i)aleolithic period. Other persons have heretofore ex- 

 pressed their belief in this proposition, but as yet it has not been 

 proved. The evidence which they presented may have been good, but 

 it was insufficient. 



Many years ago Signor Oapellini, rector of the University of Bologna, 

 visited the United States, and reported having found at Burlington, 

 Iowa, a paleolitMc implement of white flint.* 



Prof essor Joseph Leidy, in 1873, reported having found paleolithic im- 

 plements in tiinc, jasper, and quartzite at or near Fort Bridger, 

 Wyoming.! 



Professor Leidy says : 



*'Iu some places the stoue implements are so numerous, and at the same time so rudely 

 constructed, that one is constantly in doubt when to consider them as natural or 

 accidental aud wheu to view them as artificial. Some of the plains are so thickly 

 strewn Avith natural and artificial splintered stones that they look as if they had 

 been the battle-fields of great armies during the stone age." 



But Dr. Leidy did not know these implements to be what they really 

 were, that is, implements of the paleolithic period. His friend Dr. Van 

 A. Carter, residing at Fort Bridger, and well acquainted with the lan- 

 guage, history, manners, and customs of the neighboring tribes of 

 Indians, informed him that they knew nothing about these implements. 

 He reported that the Shoshones looked upon them as the gift of God to 

 their ancestors. 



The discovery by Dr. Abbott of paleolithic implements in the gravel 

 drift of the Delaware Eiver at Trenton was the leading discovery which 

 bore testimony to the existence of man in America during the paleo- 

 lithic period. His discovery was valuable, and no doubt is to be thrown 

 upon the genuineness of the implements. They tend to prove as well 

 the antiquity as the existence of the paleolithic period in AmerictJ. 

 By this discovery Trenton occupies much the same relation to American 

 prehistoric anthropology that Abbeville does to European. 



Less known, but believed to be equally authentic, was the discovery 

 of paleolithic implements by Miss Franc E. Babbitt in 1879 at Little 

 Falls, Minnesota ; by Dr. Metz, in tlie river gravel of the Little Miami 

 at Loveland, near Cincinnati ; by Professor McGee of a possibly paleo- 

 lithic spear-head of obsidian in the valley of Lake Lahontan in north- 

 western Nevada; by Dr. Hilborn T. Cresson, of Philadelphia, at Clay- 

 mont, Delaware, and Upland, Chester County, Pennsylvania, and of a 

 supposed paleolithic fire-place or hearth, explained by Prof. G. K. 

 Gilbert. 



Conceding for these finds of paleolithic implements full authenticity, 



* Le Prehistorique, par G. de Mortillet, p. 178. 



t U. S. Geological Survey, ld72 (Haydeu), p. 651, figs. 1-12. 



