Putnam.] 448 [Dec. 21, 



contemporaneous with the mastodon and mammoth, south of the 

 great ice barrier of the north, the southern border of which had 

 been so well traced in the several papers read this evening. 



The mystery of the bed of quartz chips and rude implements, 

 under the drift at Little Falls, Minnesota, had, he thought, been 

 most satisfactorily explained by the facts brought forward by Mr. 

 Upham, relating to the occurrence of surface quartz-veins near and 

 north of Little Falls, the first available locality for that rock after 

 the recession of the ice. A similar condition exists at Trenton, 

 where the argillite implements are found in the gravel, while the 

 rock from which they were probably made is found in place a short 

 distance to the northward. The only two implements yet known 

 from the Ohio gravels were made of pebbles. 



In this connection, the rude chipped implements described by 

 Col. C. C. Jones from the river drift of the Nacoochee valley, 

 must not be overlooked, and it is reasonable to expect the discov- 

 ery of the implements of man in any of the deposits of the river- 

 drift in the southern states. 



When we compare the facts now known from the eastern side of 

 the continent, with those of the western side, they seem to force 

 upon us to accept a far longer occupation by man of the western 

 coast than of the eastern ; for not only on the western side of the 

 continent have his remains been found in geological beds unques- 

 tionably earlier than the gravels of the Mississippi, Ohio and Del- 

 aware valleys, but he had at that early time reached a degree of 

 development equal to that of the inhabitants of California at the 

 time of European contact, so far as the character of the stone mor- 

 tars, chipped and polished stone implements, and shell beads, found 

 in the auriferous gravels, can tell the story. On the Pacific coast, 

 where the conditions of life were more favorable, he had passed 

 beyond the palaeolithic stage before his works were buried in the 

 gravels under the beds of lava ; while at a later period on the 

 Atlantic coast he was still in the palaeolithic stage. Either this 

 must be accepted, or else the geological changes on the Pacific coast 

 have been entirely misunderstood ; for we can no longer question 

 the many instances of the discovery of the works of man, and also 

 of his bones, in the Californian gravels. The same story is told 

 by the beautifully chipped implement of obsidian found by Mr. 

 McGee in the quaternary deposits of Lake Lahontan in Nevada. 



It is also of importance to recall that it is at the north, across 



