1887.] 427 [Wright. 



ON THE AGE OF THE OHIO GRAVEL-BEDS. 



BY REV. G. FREDERICK WRIGHT. 



In November, 1880, I visited Trenton, New Jersey, in company 

 with Professor Boyd Dawkins, Professor Henry W. Haynes, and 

 Professor H. Carvill Lewis. Under the guidance of Dr. Abbott 

 we visited all the sections of the Trenton gravel that were then 

 exposed in fresh railroad cuttings and in embankments which had 

 been recently undermined. Though not finding any paleolithic 

 implements myself, several were found by Professors Haynes and 

 Dawkins in piles of gravel where my inexperienced eye had only 

 retained impressions of glaciated pebbles. One of the palseoliths 

 found at that time is exhibited this evening by Professor Haynes ; 

 and both he and Professor Dawkins were satisfied that some of the 

 implements they found must have lain in undisturbed deposits of 

 the gravel, though they were actually found in the talus which had 

 recently accumulated at the foot of the various cuttings of the 

 bank. I have subsequently revisited the locality two or three 

 times so as to increase my familiarity with the situation and char- 

 acter of the gravel deposits. 



Shortly before our visit to Trenton the true glacial character of 

 the gravel in which Dr. Abbott had found the palaeolithic imple- 

 ments had been pointed out by Professor Cook, of the New Jersey 

 Geological Survey. (See his report for 1878, p. 22, and Clay 

 Report, 1878, p. 17.) It was at this time, and with these facts 

 before us, that Professor Lewis and myself laid the extensive 

 plans for the exploration of the southern boundary of the glaciated 

 region to which I have since given unremitting attention during the 

 leisure afforded from my regular duties. 1 



detailed results of my own work may be found in the joint report of Professor 

 Lewis and myself in 1884 upon the Terminal Moraine of Pennsylvania (constituting 

 volume Z in the Reports of the Second Geological Survey) and in my report upon 

 The Glacial Boundary in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky (made to the Western Reserve 

 Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio, in 1884). My report upon the glacial boundary in 

 Illinois, and of subsequent investigations in the Ohio valley, has not yet appeared, but 

 will be published soon in a monograph on the whole subject pi'epared for the United 

 States Geological Survey. Some additional facts may also be found in my chapter on 

 the Glacial Boundary in Ohio, in volume V, of the Ohio Geological Survey, pp. 750-772, 

 and in articles in the American Journal of Science, vol. xxvi (July, 1882), in the Amer- 

 ican Naturalist for August, 1884, in the Bibliotheca Sacra for April, 18S4, and in the 

 Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly for September and December, 1887; also 

 in the report of the Meeting of this Society for Jan. 19, 1881 (vol. xxi, pp. 137-145); 

 while a general discussion of the whole situation may be found in Chapter VI, of my 

 volume entitled "Studies in Science and Religion." 



