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SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XX. No. 510 



acter of the gravel, having been cautioned upon this point in the 

 early part of his investigations. 



Nor is he the only one who has found implements which were 

 clearly in those undisturbed gravel deposits. Professor Shaler (Re- 

 port of the Peabody Museum at Cambridge, Vol. II., p. 45) found 

 two of the implements twelve feet below the top of the bank, where 

 he says that it was difficult for him to believe that they could 

 have travelled down from the superficial soil, and he ex- 

 presses it as his opinion, after having gone over the ground 

 with Dr. Abbott, that the implements which Dr. Abbott had 

 found occurred under conditions that make it " quite unques- 

 tionable that they were deposited at a depth of many feet below 

 the soil, and are really mingled with the drift matter that forms 

 the section before described." This is the description which I 

 have quoted in my volume (p. 343). Professor Putnam, also, 

 personally found implements in position which he decided to be 

 certainly undisturbed gravel (see 14th Annual Report of Peabody 

 Museum, p. 23, and Proc. Boston Society of Natural History for 

 Jan. 19, 1880). 



The question of the occurrence of these implements in undis- 

 turbed gravel was so thoroughly discussed by the scientific men 

 in Boston who visited the region about 1880 that I had supposed 

 there was no longer any reasonable doubt concerning the facts, 

 and I feel sure that anyone who goes through the records of the 

 Peabody Museum and the Boston Society of Natural History about 

 that time will be convinced. At the same time I would say that 

 I have been unable myself to find any implements in place, though 

 I have frequently examined the bank. But I have not felt at 

 liberty on that account to doubt the abundant testimony of others 

 who have. If we are limited to believing ordy what we ourselves 

 have seen, our knowledge will be unduly circumscribed ; and 

 though I might be more certain of the facts if I had seen them 

 myself, I do not see how I could increase the confidence, in the 

 facts, of other people who could disregard the testimony already in 

 hand. 



Passing now from the discoveries at Trenton, N. J., to those in 

 gravels of corresponding age in Ohio, we do not come to the sub- 

 ject with the same amount of incredulity with which we first en- 

 countered the evidence at Trenton. Dr. Metz has been for years 

 co-operating with Professor Putnam in various investigations, 

 aud the discovery of a flint implement by him in excavating for a 

 cistern in his own yard was such that no reasonable question can 

 be raised as to its having been undisturbed since the deposit was 

 made, and there can be no reasonable question that the deposit 

 was made during the continuance of glacial conditions in the 

 State. I have described the conditions in a report to the Archaeo- 

 logical Society of Ohio for December, 1887. 



The discovery of a palaeolithic implement at New Comerstown, 

 Ohio, by Mr. W. C. Mills, is an equally well-attested case. Mr. 

 Mills, like Dr. Abbott, resided in close proximity to an extensive 

 glacial terrace to which the railroad was resorting for ballast. 

 Many acres of the gravel have been removed. During the prog- 

 ress of these excavations Mr. Mills repeatedly visited the pit, and 

 after a fresh excavation discovered this implement in a perpen- 

 dicular face of the bank fifteen feet below the surface. The facts 

 were recorded in his diary and the implement placed in the gen- 

 eral collection of Indian relics which he was making. Mr. Mills 

 was at that time engaged in business in the place, but he had 

 been a pupil of Professor Orton in geology, and was well qualified 

 to judge of the undisturbed character of the gravel in which this 

 implement was found. As anyone can see by consulting the photo- 

 graphic illustrations on pp. 352 and 253 of ray volume, the 

 implement itself is an exact duplicate, so far as form is concerned, 

 of one which I have in my own collection, from Amiens, France, 

 and which came to me, through Professor Asa Gray, directly 

 from the collection of Dr. Evans in London. The New Comers- 

 town implement was submitted to Professor Haynes of Boston 

 and to others at a meeting of the Boston Society of Natural His- 

 tory, and by them pronounced to have all the essential character- 

 istics of palaeolithic age. The full report upon this is found in 

 Tract No. 75 of the Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleve- 

 land. 



As to Miss Babbitt's discoveries at Little Falls, Minn., I have 



nothing further to say than that up to the present year no serious 

 question had been raised concerning the glacial age of the gravel 

 in which her implements were found. But as questions have 

 now been raised in view of recent examinations, I will not at- 

 tempt to discuss the matter until the facts are more fully pub- 

 lished. But the removal of this case from the category would 

 not disturb confidence in the evidence connecting man with the 

 glacial period in New Jersey and Ohio. 



The statement of Dr. Brinton that a well-known government 

 geologist had recognized the Nampa image " as a clay toy manu- 

 factured by the neighboring Pocatello Indians " is news to me, 

 and it is due to the public that this official's knowledge of the 

 subject should be more specifically detailed. The facts as I have 

 brought them out by prolonged and minute inquiry do not war- 

 rant any such flippant treatment of the evidence. Professor Put- 

 nam, to whose inspection the image was subjected when it first 

 came into my hands, at once pronounced it an antiquity of some 

 sort, unlike anything which he knew to be in existence among the 

 aboriginal tribes. I need not say that Professor Putnam's opinion 

 upon a question of that sort is of the very highest value. There 

 were upon the image patches of the anhydrous oxide of iron, 

 which to him and other experts were indubitable evidence that it 

 had lain for a long time in the earth. Subsequently I ascertained, 

 while on the ground at Nampa, that the shade of color in this iron 

 oxide upon it corresponded exactly to that which had formed 

 upon the clay concretions which came up in large quantities from 

 the same stratum in which the image was alleged to have been 

 found. I have also, I think, made it evident that the burying of 

 human relics even to the great depth of 820 feet in the Snake 

 River Valley may not be much more surprising than the burial of 

 the remains of man in Pompeii aud Herculaneum, and that the 

 date of this burial may not have been very many thousand years 

 ago. The direct evidence to the fact that this little iihage, an inch 

 and a half loog, came up from the depth reported is about as con- 

 vincing as we can have for any fact which depends for credence 

 upon human testimony. There has been nothing with regard to 

 the appearance of the parties suggesting fraud. Mr. Cumming, 

 the superintendent of that division of the Union Pacific Railroad, 

 whose attention to the facts was called the day after the discovery, 

 is a Harvard College graduate, of extended legal education and 

 wide practical experience, who knew all the parties and was 

 familiar with the circumstances, and investigated them upon the 

 ground. Charles Francis Adams emphatically affirms that Mr. 

 Cumming's evidence in this matter is entitled to as much consid- 

 eration as the evidence of any scientific man would be. Anyone 

 who wishes to get my detailed report of the evidence will find it in 

 the Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History for Jan. 

 1, 1890, and Feb. 18, 1891. 



The discoveries of human implements under Table Mountain in 

 California are in close analogy with this discovery at Nampa, in 

 the Snake River Valley, and the same remarks have been made 

 respecting them that Dr. Brinton reports concerning the Nampa 

 image, namely, that they are modern implements at present in 

 use among the local tribes of Indians. But no such offhand 

 opinion as this can break the force of the evidence which has 

 accumulated in support of their having been found in deposits 

 which have been undisturbed since the great lava outflows which 

 constitute what is called the Sonora Table Mountain. The evi- 

 dence concerning the Calaveras skull has been exhaustively dis- 

 cussed by Professor Whitney of Harvard College, who pronounces 

 the facts to be beyond all reasonable doubt. At the meeting of the 

 Geological Society in Washington in January, 1891, three inde- 

 pendent discoveries of human implements in conditions similar to 

 those assigned to the Calaveras skull were presented. I had my- 

 self obtained information at Sonora of the discovery of a stone- 

 mortar in the tunnel of the Empire mine of which the evidence 

 was satisfactory beyond reasonable doubt. The discovery was 

 made by the assistant surveyor of the county in the tunnel of a 

 mine under Table Mountain, which was owned by his father and 

 where work is still prosecuted. The mortar had been given away 

 to another person, but it has since come into my hands and is 

 preserved in the Museum of the Western Reserve Historical So- 

 ciety of Cleveland. 



