1881 .] 
127 
[Abbott. 
stream, the implements found in its valley would have been ac- 
cepted at once as evidence of the so-called palaeolithic man ; 
but being in another continent, and one supposedly beyond the 
reach of this early man, as theoretical ethnologists have considered 
him, my claims that I had discovered in America traces of this 
primitive chipper of pebbles, have been strenuously denied, especially 
by a few, who have never visited the locality or seen a specimen 
of chipped implement taken therefrom, as altogether unwarranted 
by the facts. 
In this matter there has been, as my several publications show, 
no attempt to make the facts conform to a jir e-con ceived theory. 
The pre-conception, on the contrary, being that all traces of man 
in America were to be referred to the neolithic Indian, and the 
many facts in the case, finally forced me to relinquish it. 
In Se])tember, 1876, Mr. Putnam, the Curator of the Peabody 
Museum of Archaeology at Cambridge, Mass., favored me with a 
visit, and together we carefully examined the river bluff below 
Trenton, and succeeded in finding two specimens in situ , such as I 
had previously described in the American Naturalist, and at his re- 
quest I continued my examination- of these gravels, acting under 
an appropriation made by the Peabody Museum for this purpose; 
and, in November of the same year, submitted to him a report On 
the Discovery of Supposed Palaeolithic Implements from the 
Glacial drift in the Valley of the Delaware Diver , near Trenton , 
New Jersey . Still realizing how all important it was in this matter 
to make haste slowly, I purposely referred to these chipped stones 
as supposed palaeolithic implements, and gave, in detail, my rea- 
sons for thus considering them. 
Referring to this report Mr. Putnam remarked, in his annual 
report to the trustees of the Peabody Museum, that “from a visit 
to the locality with Dr. Abbott, I see no reason to doubt the 
general conclusion he has reached in regard to the existence of 
man in glacial times on the Atlantic coast of North America.” 
Before this report was published these gravel deposits were 
visited by Prof. N. S. Shaler, who was fortunate enough to find a 
characteristic specimen, bnt not in situ. I also found one, 
likewise in the talus. Of these specimens, Professor Shaler says, 
“Although the whole face of the escarpmeut is in motion, creep- 
