Stratijkd Drift of the vicinity of Richmond, Va. 199 



bles— which circumstance favors the conjecture that they have 

 been washed out of the overlying beds. 



I dug out of the vertical wall of excavation two well-defined 

 implements — one three feet below the surface, the other two 

 feet deeper. Both were imbedded in firmly cemented reddish 

 gravel. The deeper-lying pebble is worn smooth on its chipped 

 edge, the other has the appearance of being rolled but slightly. 



This section of the old-river shore is half a mile distant 

 from the present bank of the river. I may hereafter refer to 

 it as the Fonticello gravel. Similar beds of gravel on the right 

 bank of the river I have found to contain worked pebbles. 



Mr. Mann S. Valentine, to whom I have shown my drift- 

 specimens, has examined a bed of old river-gravel a mile away 

 from the falls, and found some interesting flints. I have not 

 seen them, but do not doubt that they are of the same general 

 character as those contained in the high-level beds on either 

 bank of the river. 



In a deep cut of the Petersburg road, a little beyond the 

 High bridge on the south side, I found several flint chips and 

 worked pebbles, which appear to take the staining of the light 

 gray matrix from which they had been taken. The elevation 

 of the terrace at this point is seventy feet above the rapids — 

 the depth of the specimens below its surface ten feet. My son 

 Charles, who has been trained to look for worked flints, dug 

 out of the clay-bed a rude stone hatchet. An exceedingly 

 beautiful adze or hatchet was found here by me, though not in 

 place. There can be no doubt that it belongs to the same stra- 

 tum of clay from which other but not similar looking flints 

 were extracted by me. It is shoe-shaped grayish-looking 

 quartzite flint, and has been chiseled into form by a half dozen 

 blows given with a downward stroke. It is not worn. It may 

 have been used either in the hand, or with a haft. 



The whitish clay from which I took it lies in a trough of the 

 granite which attains an altitude at this point of sixty feet or 

 more above the level of the river close by. It is capped by the 

 usual brick-earth, which, however, is rather scantily deposited 

 at this place. 



It will be understood by the reader that all the discoveries 

 herein mentioned were made in deposits forming parts of the 

 clay and gravel The implements could not have been intro- 

 duced into the formations by any other agencies than those 

 which deposited at the same time the containing beds. 

 Richmond, Va., Jan. 13, 1876. 



