Page:The Journal of geology (IA journalofgeology11893univ).pdf/33

upwards of twenty trenches through similar gravel deposits, and was therefore well qualified for the work. Prof. W. J. McGee, Prof. R. D. Salisbury, Dr. Stewart Culin and Dr. Abbott also visited the place one or more times each. Relics of art were found upon the surface and in such portions of the talus as happened to be exposed, but nothing whatever was found in the gravels in place, and the search was closed when it became fully apparent that the case was hopeless.

It may be claimed that the conditions under which gravels are exposed in trenching as it progresses, are not as favorable for the collection of enclosed relics as where exposed by natural processes of weathering. This is true in a certain measure,as specimens may be obscured by the damp clinging sand which forms the matrix of the gravels. This, however, would interfere but little with the discovery of large flaked stones, such as we were led to expect in this place, and this slight disadvantage in detecting shaped pieces in fresh exposures is more than overbalanced by the treachery of weathered surfaces which often give to intrusive objects the appearance of original inclusion. The opportunity for studying the gravels in all their phases of bedding, composition and contents, was really excellent, and no one could watch the constantly renewed exposures hour after hour for a month without forming a most decided notion as to the implement bearing qualities of the formation. Not the trace of a flaked stone, or of a flake or artificial fragment of any kind was found, and we closed the work with the firm conviction that the gravels exposed by this trench were absolutely barren of art. But Dr. Abbott claims to have found numerous implements in the bluff face a few feet away and in the same gravels. If this is true, the conditions of glacial occupation of this site must have been indeed remarkable. It is implied that during the whole period occupied by the melting of the ice sheet within the drainage of the Delaware valley the hypothetical rude race lived on a particular line or zone afterwards exposed by the river to the depth of 30 feet, leaving his strange "tools" there by the hundreds, while another line or zone, not more than forty feet away