I50 The Amciican Geologist. September, 1902 
feet from the entrance of the cellar excavation. The ax has 
an adhering incrustation of calcareous material on one side, 
evidently deposited by ground water. The loess at this place 
has possibly been disturbed by creeping or by rain wash, but its 
appearance suggests nothing of the kind. It is quite typical 
loess for this region. The ax was discovered by the workmen 
engaged in excavating the cellar and immediately shown to 
Engineer Robert F. Rain, who superintended the work, and 
who still has possession of it." 
Since man is shown to have lived in this region, probably 
10,000 to 15,000 years ago, with elephants and mastodons, it 
seems quite possible that he left some token of them in the forms 
of some of his mounds, or in their contents, as the much dis- 
cussed sandstone pipes found in Louisa county, southeastern 
Iowa, and owned by the Davenport Academy of Natural Sci- 
ences, carved to represent the elephant or mammoth of the 
Ice age. In Europe, at about the same time, the spirited carv- 
ings of the outlines of mammoths and reindeer, on their own 
tusks and antlers, by the Late Paleolithic men, give indubitable 
evidence that they and these animals of the Glacial period 
subsisted together. Indeed, very probably the extinction of 
the mammoth, and of the horse in America before Columbus 
came, may have been due to the ])rowess of the aboriginal 
hunters in killing them for their food. 
THE TRAINING AND WORK OF A GEOLOGIST.* 
C. R. Van Hise, Madison, Wis. 
Geology is a dynamic science, subject to the laws of ener- 
gy. Geology- treats of a world alive, instead of, as commonly 
supposed, a world finished and dead. The atmosphere, or 
sphere of air, is ever unquiet; the hydrosphere, or sphere of 
water, is less active, but still very mobile ; the lithosphere, or 
sphere of rock, has every where continuous, although slow, mo- 
tions. The motions of the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, and 
the lithosphere alike include motions by which the positions 
of large masses of material are changed, and interior motions, 
through which the mineral particles are constantly rearranged 
*Vice-Presidential address. Section E, Geology and Geography, American 
Associatioa for the advancement of Science, Pittsburgh Meeting, 1902. 
