3i8 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XXI. No. 540 



The above quotation is the tenor of that admirable article which 

 ought to be read by every person interested in education and the 

 welfare of his children and country. 



Children are born with a love for nature which usually later 

 leaves them. They are of an inquisitive turn of mind and ad- 

 mire flowers and birds while very young, but this is soon smoth- 

 ered instead of being fostered by text -book work and the common 

 method of poking facts into reluctant brains in an ill-ventilated 

 schoolroom by a teacher who knows all about the recent advances 

 in pedagogy but nothing about the subject he is teaching. 



The training of the senses of observation, of the faculty of re- 

 flection, and of the using of the hand, constitutes an education. 

 One thus trained can get ten times more outof life than the book- 

 worms who feed on second-hand facts. 



The students — and the very youngest students — must be 

 reached, and the manner of reaching them is through the teachers. 

 For 'his purpose the new summer school at Avalon has been es- 

 tablished. The work in natural history will be mostly out-of- 

 doors. The students will go with the teachers out among the 

 dunes, in boats about the bays and thoroughfares, among the 

 marshes and along the shore, gathering plants and animals for 

 study. The students in art will sketch right out among the 

 bright-colored sand dunes and study the richness of color which 

 characterizes those beaches and marshes by the sea. 



Dr. Charles Dolley is the president and leading founder of this 

 institution. He was formerly Professor of General Biology in 

 the University of Pennsylvania. He was long a student and near 

 friend of Dr. Joseph Leidy, whom, in his character and broadness 

 of views, he resembles. He is a close student of nature, versed in 

 both languages and science, and possessed of such personal mag- 

 netism and pleasing manners that he is always surrounded by 

 many friends and admirers who are always helped by his never- 

 failing enthusiasm and encouragement. A better person could 

 not have been chosen for such a position. 



The place selected for this summer school is a good one. Plenty 

 of good material for science work is near at hand. It is the only 

 beach on the coast where beautiful forests of red cedar and holly 

 are still standing. There is a long even beach, unexcelled for 

 bathing and carriage and bicycle riding. There are high 

 white sand dunes and beyond vast stretches of salt marshes 

 intersected by many bays, thoroughfares, and salt ponds. On 

 the mainland there are forests of pines and many beautiful plants 

 peculiar to the " low pine barrens of south Jersey." 



For a sum not exceeding $50, including all expenses, a teacher 

 can spend five weeks pleasantly and profitably at the seashore, 

 not only bathing and enjoying the salt sea air and the other 

 pleasures of such a result but breathing in a kind of knowledge 

 which they will relish and impart to those under them and thus 

 help to bring about this chansje in the manner of common school 

 education for which many are hoping. John Gifford. 



Swarthmore, Pa. 



Early Man in Minnesota. 



In The American Geologist (April, 1893) Mr. Wm. H. Holmes 

 has published another long article, this time endeavoring to show 

 that there is no evidence whatever of the existence of early man 

 in Minnesota. The article is very prettily illustrated with fan- 

 ciful sketches, which Mr. Holmes's practice as an artist makes 

 him to evolve from his inner consciousness, and which he em- 

 ploys in all his writings in place of arguments in support of his 

 theory of the non existence of palaeolithic man in North 

 America. 



He says that " Besides the investigations of Professor Winchell 

 and Miss Babbitt, no work has been done upon the archaeology of 

 this region, although other writers, notably Mr. Warren Upham, 

 Professor G. F. Wright, and Mr. Henry W. Haynes, taking for 

 granted the correctness of all the original observations and con- 

 clusions, have ventured to enlarge upon the material published." 



The only " venturing" I have done has been to express to the 

 late Miss Babbitt, who sent to me for examination a large quan- 

 tity of pieces of quartz collected by herself, the conviction that 

 these fragments were of artifi.cial and not of natural origin. As 

 Mr. Holmes calls them Indian refuse, I can scarcely be charged 



with very hazardous venturing. Miss Babbitt wrote to me that 

 she had discovered them in undisturbed deposits of glacial origin. 

 If this is true, as I have no reason to doubt it is, certain objects 

 among them presenting the palaeolithic type must of necessity be 

 true palaeolithic implements, and not, like many of a similar type 

 that have been found on the surface, be of doubtful origin. 

 Every one knows that such objects are also sometimes found 

 in Indian shell-heaps and village sites. Accordingly, whether 

 any particular object can be positively identified as a true palaeo- 

 lithic implement or not depends upon the conditions of its occur- 

 rence. That is a question for geologists to answer, and if they 

 pronounce the site to be of glacial origin the probability is very 

 great that similar objects found in the immediate vicinity are 

 also palEeolithic implements. This is the state of the question 

 with respect to the objects found in the Trenton gravels. How 

 does this reasoning apply to the so-called Babbitt quartzes? The 

 glacial man in fashioning palceolithic implements must have pro- 

 duced a great many splinters and fragments, just as the Indian 

 did in producing his implements. If any particular locality of- 

 fersonly oneavailable material to work with, the refuse of palaeo- 

 lithic man and of the Indian must be precisely alike. I understand, 

 this to be true of the out- cropping of veins of quartz in the slate 

 in the neighborhood of Little Falls. Minnesota. No one doubts 

 that Indian relics are found in that vicinity, as is always the case 

 at all good fishing sites like that. But Indian implements and 

 palaeolithic implements are very different in appearance, and no 

 skilled archceologist will mistake one for the other. I have seen 

 palasolithic implements that Miss Babbitt said she had found 

 in undisturbed glacial deposits. This is positive, undisputed tes- 

 timony. What has Mr. Holmes to say in answer to it ? I will 

 quote his words precisely: " My investigations have shown that 

 the glacial quartzes were probably not originally included in the 

 loam but rather that they were introduced into it in post-glacial 

 times, and that they were rude because mere shop refuse, the 

 period of occupation thus, in all probability, corresponding to 

 that of our historic aborigines." This may be very convincing to 

 some people, but to my mind it is not quite satisfactory. Pro- 

 fessor Winchell says that the quartz fragments are to be found 

 over a very extensive region, "up and down the river an un- 

 known distance," and extending "downward three or four feet" 

 in " hard-pan drift containing boulders." That is something 

 quite different from " loam," the word persistently employed by 

 Mr. Holmes in speaking of the fragments. Loam is defined by 

 Webster as meaning " a mixture of clay and sand with organic 

 matter to which its fertility is chiefly due." If this is the nature 

 of " hard-pan drift, containing boulders," I am incapable of 

 understanding ordinary language. Professor Winchell's words 

 can only be understood of undisturbed glacial deposits. But 

 Mr. Holmes says " there is nothing in the conditions and phe- 

 nomena of the site that will enable us to say whether the begin- 

 ning of the quartz- working dates back one hundred or one thou- 

 sand years." He reaches this sweeping conclusion by imagining 

 that Indian refuse from the surface has been introduced intO' 

 this " hard-pan" by sinking through the decaying substance of 

 the roots of large trees that have been uprooted by a tornado. 

 Let me quote his own words: " The explanation thus furnished 

 of the distribution of the worked quartzes of this locality through 

 the glacial deposits to the depth of four feet or more is so satis- 

 factory that no other theories are called for, and little further 

 discussion seems necessary." To my mind this explanation is 

 just as satisfactory, and no more so, than Mr. Holmes's former 

 explanation that "most of the so-called gravel implements of 

 Europe are doubtless the r-jects of manufacture." 



Mr. Holmes firstdraws pretty pictures,and thendraws from them 

 the conclusion that " the record may be so altered in the period 

 of a generation as to be i-ead ten thousand years instead of fifty. 

 Such is the magic of Nature's transformations, and such are the' 

 pitfalls set for unwary explorers." Miss Babbitt, the " unwary 

 explorer " in the present instance, is no longer living to defend 

 herself from such assumption as this, but I think all lovers of 

 justice will feel that this is a pretty weak answer to her positive 

 assertions. Mr. Holmes continues: "The mistakes made by Miss 

 Babbitt are precisely such as others have made through taking 



