1006 Man in the Tertiaries. [October, 
ruined villages. Grain and even the bread they made being pre- 
served, and yet human bones are of scanty occurrence. The 
Danish peat-beds have as yet never yielded human bones, though 
stone implements and objects of various kinds from these depos- 
its enrich the museums of Denmark. i 
The shell heap deposits all over the world rarely contain human 
bones. It is said that none have been found in the Danish shell 
heaps, though Wyman found a few in the Florida shell mounds, 
and the deposits in Japan reveal similar traces. 
Chief among the agencies in destroying the evidences of man 
have been the glacial floods, and these, if the glacialists are right, 
have occurred, one, during the earlier pliocene, and the other at 
the beginning of the quaternary. To these overwhelming and 
annihilating ice torrents, grinding, sweeping and inundating the 
north temperate zone, must be attributed the almost complete ob- 
literation of records we hold most precious. And in their 
gradual recedence no less destructive agencies were at work in 
scooping out valleys, inundating immense areas and covering 
broad tracts of land by their detritus. eos 
Even man to-day with his colossal works of engineering skill 
would in the face of a glacial flood yield the last traces of the 
evidences of his existence. A few corroded boulders of metal, 
and bits of glazed pottery alone might survive. What must pP 
a torrent have been to primitive man with his simple and ru 
appliances ! ° 
It would seem from many facts that early man lived in the 
vicinity of water, either on the banks of rivers, or along the coast 
line. The reasons for this are obvious enough; food was i 
Procurable at every receding tide and when man acquired the i 
of boat-making natural thoroughfares were always available a 
4 greater necessity from the dense forests which covered 
and. 
iivit is just these regions that have been most profoundly 
modified since glacial days and indeed in all times. 
_ Ancient river beds have been widened, lowered and obliterated 
Coast lines have changed, great tracts have disappeared ers of 
the waves and degradations of the coast lines by the pounding 
the waves has been universal, calls 
| Professor George H. Cook, state geologist of New Jersey, the 
attention to the universal subsidence of the coast line from 
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