HAN AND THE GLACIAL PERIOD. 625 



character in the two places. Similar discoveries were also 

 made at various other places in southeastern England, the 

 most important being in the vicinity of Southampton and the 

 Isle of Wight. 



When we come to examine these European deposits with 

 reference to their relation to the Glacial period, it must be 

 confessed that we enter a rather obscure held. The region 

 in Europe in which palaeolithic implements have been found 

 imbedded in the gravel of river terraces is peculiar for its 

 limitation. In Great Britain none have been found north of 

 a line connecting the British Channel with the Wash, and 

 on the Continent these discoveries are all outside the direct 

 action of glaciers either from the Scandinavian or the Swiss 

 fields. Hence it will be seen that the problem is quite dif- 

 ferent from that which we shall presently study in America, 

 and is far more complicated. Still, the same rule holds good 

 in one country as in the other, that the higher terraces are 

 older than the lower, and there can be little doubt that the 

 terraces in which palaeoliths are found are directly or in- 

 directly of glacial origin. But the data for estimating the 

 time which has elapsed since the deposition by glacial tor- 

 rents of the high-level gravels in the valley of the Sonmie 

 and in southern England are much less clear than in this 

 country. 



The year 1875 marks an epoch in the prehistoric archae- 

 ology of North America, since it was then that Dr. C. C. 

 Abbott's attention was first specially attracted to the imple- 

 ments of a palaeolithic type found in the neighborhood of his 

 residence in Trenton, N. J. Whether these implements were 

 from the surface, or from the gravel which underlies the city, 

 was at first uncertain, for they had then been found only in 

 the talus of the gravel-banks. But Dr. Abbott's residence 

 at Trenton enabled him during the succeeding year to give 

 attention to the numerous fresh exposures of the gravel 

 made by railroad and other excavations ; and he was soon 

 rewarded for his pains by finding several chipped imple- 

 ments in undisturbed strata of gravel, some of which were as 



