708 Editors’ Table. 
ice-sheet retired. While the deposition of the valley-drift at Lit- 
tle Falls was still going forward, men may have lived there, and — 
left, as the remnants of their manufacture of stone implements, 
the multitude of quartz fragments here described. By the con- 
tinued deposition of the modified drift, lifting the river upon 
the surface of its glacial flood-plain, these quartz chips were 
deeply buried in that formation. The date of this valley-drift 
must be that of the retreat of the ice of the last glacial epoch, 
from whose melting were supplied both this sediment and the — 
floods by which it was brought. The glacial flood-plain beneath 
whose surface the quartz fragments occur, was deposited in the 
same manner as additions are now made to the surface of the 
bottom-land; but the flooded condition of the river, by whic 
this is done, was doubtless maintained through all the warm por 
tion of the year, while the ice-sheet was being melted away upon 
the region‘of its head waters. In spring, autumn, and winter, 0n 
in exceptional years, through much of the summer, it seems 
probable that the river was confined to a channel, being of insuf- 
ficient volume to cover its flood-plain. At sucha time this plain 
seems to have been the site of human habitations and industry, 
as shown in this paper.! After the complete disappearance of the 
ice from the basin of the Upper Mississippi, the supply of 
water and sediment was so diminished that the river, from that 
time till now, has been occupied more in erosion than in depost- 
tion, and has cut its channel far below the level at which it ses 
flowed, excavating and carrying to the Gulf of Mexico a gre 
part of its glacial flood-plain, the remnants of which are seen 
high terraces or plains upon each side of the river.” 
20; 
EDITORS’ TABLE. 
EDITORS: A. S. PACKARD, JR., AND E. D. COPE. 
in the 
The preservation of some herds of our larger gam© in í 
| Governmet! — 
parks which are under the direction of the Nationa sae 
is an object which has received the approval of various pe i 
persons from time to time. We believe that the constitution 
the Yellowstone Park Commission contemplates the pres? 
of the game within its borders, but does not provide i ing 
maintenance of herds of any size, or for any means of fie 
them within the limits of the protected territory. sected i 
however, that in point of fact the game is not bette pre 
the Yellowstone park than elsewhere. 
RE ee E e APE A E ee ee nT A 
a 
: : Sot ed this field 
1 Evidence is at present wanting that the quartz-workers verte spreading out o 
operations between the abandonment of the quartz stratum an 3 
the uppermost portion of the terrace-plain. 
