1881 .] 
181 
[Abbott. 
What further evidence of the substantial correctness of my 
own conclusions, as to the existence of palaeolithic man, can be 
asked ? 
To the subject of erosion of tfie present surface of the locality, 
whereby the uplands are being worn away, and the valleys filled 
I can but briefly refer; merely calling attention to the fact 
that by this agency the recent Indian relics are brought 
down, as it were, to the level of the gravels ; and likewise, the 
implement-bearing gravels are brought to the surface ; thus com- 
mingling objects, in many cases, that originally were separated by 
the stratum of soil that capped the gravels in former times. To 
return to the consideration of the Trenton gravel I will say, in 
conclusion, that it is clearly evident, as Mr. Wright will explain to 
you, that the accumulation of these gravels was gradual, and 
considerable time may have elapsed from the date of the first 
or lowest of the gravels, before additional material was brought 
from above. Beyond the limits of these gravels stretched in 
every direction a vast area of habitable ground, as I have men- 
tioned, with a fauna adapted to supply man with every need ; 
and how natural that the primitive American should have gone 
to these then accumulating beds of shingle, to select and chip 
into proper shape, the pebbles, that thus worked uj3on, constituted 
his only known weapons ; the same the world over : Europe, Asia 
Africa and America ! 
No cataclysm drove him from the spot, and all those years 
that the ever increasing beds of sand, gravel and boulders 
were accumulating, he dwelt here, familiar, it is now known, with 
the mastodon, and likewise with the bison, reindeer, musk-ox 
and the fauna of the present time : and when the last of these 
transporting floods had wholly passed away this primitive man 
was America’s sole occupant, and left upon the surface of the 
latest stratum of sand and pebbles, that floods from a once gla- 
ciated valley brought from the mountains beyond, the same rude 
implements of stone that his ancestors had lost in the underlying 
gravels beneath his feet. 
W e are to-day contemporary with vast accumulations of allu- 
vium that are steadily increasing in our river valleys ; — why then 
might not palaeolithic man as readily have been contemporary 
with the almost as gradual growth of these older beds of gravel ? 
