Page:The Journal of geology (IA journalofgeology11893univ).pdf/177
vation of an inexpert collector at all in questions where there is no other well-established body of evidence with which to associate it. The function of such data does not extend legitimately beyond the confirming of testimony already well verified.
I present in the accompanying plate examples of the finds from the gravel talus and from the shops above. They correspond very closely in material and appearance with the Newcomerstown specimen, as will be apparent from an examination of the plate. The figures are presented without identification in order that the student may, by an effort to distinguish them, convince himself of the similarity of the supposed paleolith to the quarry-shop rejects of the region. I am not satisfied with the drawing of the former specimen which is a copy, the best that could be made, of the cut polished in "Man and the Glacial Period." I desired to have a new drawing direct from the specimens, but a request looking to that end, made to Professor Wright, met with no response.
The four quarry-shop failures here shown are not rare finds with unusually implement-like features. They are everyday rejects, and four hundred could be presented as readily as four.
Summing up the evidence of gravel man in Ohio, assembling all of the finds of several earnest workers these many years—the fulfillment of Professor Wright's prophecy—we have to consider three specimens only. The finding of these objects seems ordinarily well attested, and there is not the least hint of deception or partial withholding of details of discovery. The specimen found by Dr. Metz in his cistern was eight feet deep, and on, or in, the surface of the gravel bed beneath eight feet of silt that may or may not be glacial. Eight feet is not a great depth, however, and we are justified, so long as the specimen stands alone, in expressing our fears that it might, through some unsuspected disturbance of the soil, artificial or natural, have been introduced or covered up to this depth at some date in the long period separating the ice age from the present. A number of agencies known to disturb the soil to considerable depths, are referred to in my paper on early man in Minnesota, in the April