1882.] 101 [Abbott. 



of a chipped implement, projecting from the gravel. It was but 

 a mere point, a splinter of stone, as it were ; but thinking that it 

 was only the tip of a larger object I pulled it out and found it 

 was a mere chip, thin, flaky and slightly curved. 



For the moment, of course, I was quite chagrined ; but happily, 

 in removing the flake, I detached a mass of gravel, a cubic foot 

 or more, and by the merest accident, I noticed in the undisturbed 

 gravel, back of that which had fallen, a white pebble, as I sup- 

 posed it to be, surrounded by a mass of black, red, yellow and 

 slate colored stones. Why I paused to pick it out from its rest- 

 ing place, I cannot say. There was nothing artificial in its 

 appearance, certainly ; and small white, pebbles are not rare in 

 these gravels. At all events, I did take it from the undisturbed 

 gravel and examined it carefully, as I stood there. Taking it to 

 a muddy pool near by I washed it as well as practicable, and then 

 my doubts, as to the object being stone at all, arose, and with 

 some lingering doubts, I forwarded it to Cambridge for critical 

 examination. The result was, that the supposed pebble proved 

 to be a wisdom tooth of a man, so rolled, scratched, polished and 

 otherwise altered in shape, that its real character is not, at once, 

 apparent. 



A word here about the fossil remains found, up to this time, in 

 the Trenton gravels ; particularly with reference to the associa- 

 tion, in America, of man and the mastodon. In the Geology of 

 New Jersey, Prof. Geo. H. Cook remarks — "there has been 

 found in the terrace of modified drift at Trenton, the tusk of a 

 mastodon, which was evidently washed there when that mass of 

 matter came down from the valley of the Delaware with the tor- 

 rents of water from the melting ice. It was about fourteen feet 

 under the surface, and the gravel and stones were partially strati- 

 fied over it. From these the inference seems plain that the 

 climate at that time admitted of the growth of animals like the 

 elephant in size and habits." Either this, or the mastodon lived 

 prior to that ice-age, that, in the end, produced these gravel 

 deposits, wherein his remains are now found. And the same 

 inference is to be drawn with respect to man ; for under precisely 

 the same conditions, within a dozen rods of where the mastodon 

 tusk occurred, and buried almost as deeply, was found this 

 rolled, scratched, polished, human tooth. Nothing can be said 



