Page:The Journal of geology (IA journalofgeology11893univ).pdf/35

results. The easier explanation of the whole matter is that the objects found by Dr. Abbott were not really in the gravels, but that they are Indian shop-refuse settled into the old talus deposits of the bluff, and that his eager eyes, blinded by a prevailing belief in a paleolithic man for all the world alike, failed to observe with their wonted keenness and power.

But this case does not stand alone. The first discoveries of supposed gravel implements are said to have been made when the Pennsylvania Railway opened a road bed through the creek terrace on the site of the present station. At first numerous specimens of rudely flaked stones were reported, and the locality became widely known to archeologists, but the implement bearing portions of the gravels—and this is a most significant fact—were limited in extent, and the deposit was soon completely removed, the horizontal extension containing nothing. At present there are excellent exposures of the full thickness of the gravels at this point, but the most diligent search is vain, the only result of days of examination being a deep conviction that these gravels are and always were wholly barren of art.

It this appears that here as well as upon the river front, the works of art were confined to local deposits, limited horizontally but not vertically, and a strong presumption is created that the finds were confined to redistributed gravels settled upon the terrace face in the form of talus. Dr. Abbott states that "at that point where I gathered the majority of specimens there is a want of stratification."^[1] It is well known that such rearranged deposits are often difficult to distinguish from the original gravels. In trenching an implement producing terrace at Washington—where the conditions were probably quite similar to those at the Trenton railroad station—I passed through eighty feet of redistributed talus gravels before encountering the gravels in place, and so deceptively were portions of these deposits reset that experts in gravel phenomena were unable to decide whether they were or were not portions of the original formation