990 ; The American Naturalist. [December, 
and around its point. He contends that every cubic foot of 
this section had been dug over, in places to the bed rock, and 
the stones and clay handled and worked. All the boulders and 
earth had been loosened and shovelled, and the entire mass 
re-deposited by the diggers, as the work progressed. Mr. 
Holmes not only admits this anterior disturbance, but claims 
it as giving the chief importance to his discovery. His Plate 
III, a photograph of the quarry face, is introduced by him to 
demonstrate this prior excavation. 
But all this has naught to do in showing the antiquity of 
the quarry. If he refuses consideration and comparison of the 
implements and objects found therein, there is nothing to 
show that all this excavation, trench making and stone break- 
ing may not have been done in comparatively modern times. 
There is nothing to indicate its antiquity unless it be the ap- 
pearance of the surface, and this is only by the thickness of 
soil and the size of the trees ; and both of these may have been, 
the latter must have been, commenced since the early part of 
this century. 
If these trenches, of such length, depth and extent, had 
been dug by the modern Indian, as declared by Mr. Holmes, 
we can scarcely imagine that it would have been filled up, 
raked down, and smoothed over to a regular slope as it now is 
and was when the trees began to grow on it. Mr. Holmes’ 
Plate I shows the regularity of this slope correctly. Where 
Mr. Holmes’ greatest trenches were dug, the slope from the top 
of the hill to the bottom is regular and true without any ridge 
or hollow to indicate an open trench or pit left by the Indian 
who is alleged to have made it. By whomsoever that quarry 
was opened and whoever dug those trenches, they were after- 
ward filled up and smoothed over, leaving no break or depres- 
sion affecting the regularity of the outline of the hill-side, 
Our knowledge of the modern Indian teaches us that he would 
not perform this, to him, useless labor. This profound dis- 
turbance (the French call it remaniement) of the bowlders, clay 
and earth of the section, leaves no stratification and destroys 
all evidences of the age of the deposit. There is no fauna. 
