28 
Bulletin of the Natural History Society. 
The Neolithic period of Europe, or the time when man in that 
region used weapons of ground and polished stone, is of a later 
date than the Palaeolithic times I have glaftced at. 
No such continuous history of man in America is yet known, 
for the subject is only now receiving the attention which has been 
bestowed upon it in Europe for many years, and the landmarks 
of the older civilization of the Old World seem to be wanting in 
the New. When the American Indian of this region first became 
known to Europeans he was still in the Stone Age, but his 
weapons and his arts were such as to show that he had arrived at 
a condition of culture equivalent to the Neolithic Age of the rude 
inhabitants of Europe. Discoveries have, however, lately been 
made which make it highly probable that there was an older and 
ruder age in America as well as in Europe. Dr. Abbot, the 
pioneer in this line of research, has found in the gravel terraces 
along the Delaware River at Trenton, in New Jersey, rude stone 
implements which far antedate the occupation of that region by 
the tribes known there when the continent of America was dis- 
covered. Most of the objects found were very rudely chipped 
and belonged to a people of very primitive habits. Within a 
year or two a similar discovery, consisting, however, of stone 
chips only, was made in the terraced deposits of Central Minnesota. 
With such buried remains of man’s occupancy of the earth our 
Bocabec relics do not compare, as they rest upon the surface, 
and are unquestionably less ancient. I have already referred to 
some of the geological evidences of the recent accumulation of 
these relics, but I may mention other features which stamp these 
remains as those of a recent Neolithic people. At the very bottom 
of these shell -heaps stone axes were found which, though rudely 
formed, were fashioned by grinding ; and although the pottery 
found with these rude implements differed in pattern from that 
occurring in the higher levels of the shell-heaps, in other respects 
it showed nearly the same stage of advancement in the ceramic 
art. 
It is somewhat surprising that there should be no evidence of 
forest growth on the shore of Bocabec River at the site of the . 
village when first it was occupied by these men of the Stone Age, 
for a mere film of vegetable matter is all that separates the oldest 
