Abbott.] 
126 
[January 19, 
notice, written by me, in 1872, of the stone implements of New 
Jersey, and I there devoted a chapter to the consideration of rude 
stone implements, where I maintained that they were older than 
jasper and quartz arrowheads. One of these rude forms I referred 
to as “ a fair representative of the implements met with . . . . 
in the gravelly bluff or bank of the Delaware River, south 
of Trenton, New Jersey, and occasionally on the surface of the 
ground in the same neighborhood 
Thus while pursuing my collecting of Indian relics, it was gradu- 
ally forced upon my mind that these rude implements were more 
intimately associated with the gravel than with the surface of the 
ground and the relics of the Indians found upon it. 
Acting upon this, I ■continued for two years to most carefully 
examine both the surface of our fields and every exposure of the 
underlying gravels; and in June, 1876, after having found several 
chipped implements in situ , expressed the opinion that the Dela- 
ware river, “ now occupying a comparatively small and shallow 
channel, once flowed at an elevation of nearly fifty feet above its 
present level ; and it was when such a mighty stream as this, that 
man first gazed upon its waters and lost those rude weapons in its 
swift current, that now in the beds of gravel which its floods 
have deposited, are alike the puzzle and delight of the archaeolo- 
gist. Had these first comers, like the troglodytes of France, 
had convenient caves to shelter them, doubtless we would have 
their better wrought implements of bone to tell more surely the 
story of their ancient sojourn here; but wanting them, their 
history is not altogether lost, and in the rude weapons, now deep 
down beneath the grassy sod and flower-decked river bank, we 
learn, at least, the fact of the jwesence, in the distant past, of an 
earlier people than the Indian.” 
Thus it will be seen that I have been fairly cautious in my 
statements, and slow in reaching any conclusions with reference 
to these implements which sej3arated them from ordinary Indian 
relics, the identity of which cannot, of course, be questioned. 
Furthermore, it is difficult to see why there should not have 
been that succession of stages of culture, known as palaeolithic 
and neolithic , in North America, as has been so clearly shown as 
true of Europe. Had the Delaware river been a European 
