England Finds.—In ISS2, Professor Henry W. Haynes of Bos ton reported the discovery at several points in New Hampshire and Massachusetts of stone implements in designs ruder and more primitive than those of the Trenton gravels. They consist principally of simple forms, one cud of which is adapted to be held in the hand, while the oppo site one can be used for chopping or cutting. Some display a rough sym metry and have been brought to an edge all around; some are elongated, rather resembling chisels; while others are smaller and have the character of knives. They were fabricated out of hard and tough stones, such as quartzite, felsite, or granite. Often they have been fashioned out of pebbles from the glacial drift which still retain a portion of the original surface. This circumstance proves that they must be postglacial in date, though clearly the product of a race much less advanced than the New England Indians as known to history.
Upper Mississippi Finds.—It will be seen that the Trenton and the New England finds may, indeed, remove man's residence on this con tinent as far back as to the times immediately after the subsidence of the last great ice-sheet. But a discovery in Minnesota, on the Missis sippi above St. Paul, appears to carry him beyond this, into the midst of the Glacial Epoch itself. At that locality is a deposit known to geolo gists as "the modified glacial drift of the upper terrace of the Missis sippi;" they assign it to a period antecedent to the last glacial extension— that is, to the last "Interglacial" Period.
In the midst of this glacial drift, and underneath it, resting upon the much older strata, have been found quartz chips and rough celt-shaped fragments, pronounced by several expert geologists to have been "unques tionably fashioned by the hand of man." Professor Alexander Winchell was the first to call attention to them, in 1878, and in 1884, Miss Frances E. Babbit described such a find at Little Falls, Minnesota. It appeared to be the site of an ancient workshop, the glacial drift resting undisturbed above it to the depth of fifteen feet.
.:Vebraska Loess Nebraska there are certain ancient lake beds, long since dried up and filled with a deposit called "loess," usually considered immediately postglacial. This deposit is rich in fossils, and contains among other remains the bones of elephants and various large and long-since extinct Mammalia. In close juxtaposition to them, some times actually beneath them, Professor Aughey, the United States geolo gist, found arrow-heads of stone, dropped apparently by the ancient hunters as they crossed the lake or pursued their game in the marshes which were left behind it. Although these arrow-heads are rudely chip ped, they are compound in form, with a stem and barb; hence we cannot assign them to the first epoch of the Palmolithic Period (see page 28). Though very ancient, they certainly belong to a stage of culture, and probably to an era, long posterior to the age of the Trenton gravels.
Auriferous Gravels of finds by which it has been endeavored to prove an antiquity for man in America greater than in the Eastern Hemisphere are chiefly those from the gravel-beds of California. They consist both of stone implements and of human bones, and have excited prolonged discussions in scientific circles.
The strata of the western slope of the Rocky Mountains reveal evi dences of glacial and torrential, as well as of volcanic, action on a large scale. A layer of gravel containing blocks marked with glacial stria-, will underlie a lava-stream several feet in thickness; this, again, will be covered with a second lava-bed, and so on through hundreds of feet. In these gravel-beds are found bones of the elephant, the mastodon, and other extinct Mammalia of the early Quaternary or Postpliocene formation; and with these, in original connection and at great depths, occur imple ments of human workmanship—not rarely, but, according to the State geologist, Professor Whitney, "very frequently." Nor are these the rough, coarsely-chipped tools of the primitive ages, often so ill formed that even an expert hesitates to decide whether they are of natural or artificial shaping. So far from this, the stone imple ments from the California drift are often of surprising symmetry of form and perfection of workmanship. One such is figured and described by Dr. J. W. Foster, and is reproduced on Plate i (fig. 27). "The material is syenite, ground and polished so as to display in marked contrast the pure white of the feldspar and the dark green of the hornblende. It is in the form of a double cone, one end terminating in a point, while the other end is blunted, where it is pierced with a hole which, instead of being a uniform gauge, is reamed out, the reaming having been started from the opposite sides. When we consider its symmetry of form, the con trast of colors brought out by the process of grinding and polishing, and the delicate drilling of a hole through a material so liable to fracture, we are free to say that it affords an exhibition of the lapidary's skill superior to anything yet furnished by the Stone Age of either continent." This was discovered in a gravel-bed in the valley of San Joaquin, thirty feet below the surface—a deposit considered by the State geologist to be Postpliocene (older Quaternary). The description is instructive, as indicating how Archreology may at times correct Geology. An instru ment of this character could not possibly have an antiquity so great. It would be in contradiction to the testimony of other postpliocene deposits the world over. If the instrument, as alleged, was found in original con nection in the gravel, then the bed was of a comparatively recent alluvial formation.