1

At Warsaw, in Coshocton county, fifty miles west of Newcomerstown I visited an exposure of gravels in a railway cutting, the conditions being almost identical with those at Newcomerstown. The terrace, as in the other case, has been occupied by Indian flint workers, and being in the proximity of extensive flint quarries, there is much refuse of manufacture. I gathered a peck of turtle-backs and rude objects of paleolithic types from the level ground above, and in the wall of the gravel pit found several pieces, descended from the surface, that would be freely admitted into the paleolithic family by its sponsors. Work in the excavation had ceased several months before, and the face of the bluff, nearly thirty feet high and two hundred yards long, was well veneered more or less deeply with talus deposits, through which in places and especially near the top, the normal gravels could be seen. The redistributed deposits along the base of the steep slope were well reset, and from these I obtained a number of flaked flints; several of which were firmly imbedded, and two of them were removed from the gravel with some difficulty and with the aid of a pick, one twenty-five and the other twenty-seven feet beneath the surface of the terrace. The latter specimen is shown in the accompanying plate.

In studying this section at Warsaw I was led to realize the folly of hastily using inexpert evidence regarding the finding of relics of art in gravels. In a case like this even the experienced scientific observer, whose attention had not been definitely called to the nature and far reaching significance of such finds, might from a casual observation have recorded the recovery of one or more of these objects from the gravels. The danger would be greatly increased if the observer were only a relic hunter, or if he were convinced that the gravels at any depth might be expected to contain such objects. These specimens were in the gravels, firmly imbedded, and to all appearances this particular portion of the deposit was in a normal condition. Any one could here have dislodged a portion of the mass with his walking-stick, with fair prospect of finding a flaked stone of paleolithic type. I doubt very much if we are justified in using the casual obser

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 quarryshop 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 published 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 yearsthe 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

number of The American Geologist, and Mr. Frank Leverett, in the March number of that journal, dwells at some length upon this subject. In response to an inquiry, I received the following note from Dr. C. Hart Merriam, the naturalist, on the burrowing of native animals :

"In reply to your inquiry respecting the depth to which our burrowing mammals penetrate, I regret to say that precise information on the subject is somewhat meager. A number of species, such as our woodchucks or marmots, skunks, foxes, coyotes, badgers and prairie dogs live in burrows of greater or less depth which they construct for themselves. In a few instances these burrows are known to extend to a depth of eight feet or more. One of the gophers is said to dig a spiral well fifteen feet deep. Badgers and prairie dogs are notorious diggers, making vast numbers of holes and bringing up immense quantities of material from unknown depths. Their burrows, morcover, are usually very steep, so that a stone or other object falling into one would descend to a considerable distance before being intercepted. Badgers and coyotes make very large holes, though small in comparison with those of the large wolf, which was formerly abundant throughout the Mississippi Valley; the burrows of the latter animal are of sufficient size to readily admit the body of a small boy."

The Loveland specimen was recovered at a great depth beneath the surface but we are bound to raise the queries, Is it an implement? Was it in place; and what is the meaning of the dark soil found on its surface? Of the Newcomerstown specimen it may be said that the collector had little knowledge of the nature of the gravels and of the treacherous character of talus deposits, or of the importance or peculiar bearing of the find. There is, therefore, a most serious possibility of error. There is a decided chance that errors of observation may have crept in in all the

cases.

And what is the story of the specimens themselves? The Madisonville object is to all appearances an ordinary reject of the flint-blade maker. It can be practically duplicated upon

almost any quarry-shop site. The pick-like object from Loveland is somewhat unique, and thus has a certain interest of its own, independent of the manner of its finding. At best, however, it was probably not a finished implement at all and there is strong evidence that it has never been used. It may not have more than a remote resemblance to any tool ever employed by the occupants of the valley. The Newcomerstown object appears to have a marked resemblance to certain foreign implements, but the Tuscarawas valley flint-shops furnish many other specimens whose analogies are nearly if not quite as close.

These specimens constitute the Ohio evidence. There is nothing more, for it would be a great mistake to present surface finds as "paleoliths" or as gravel art, no matter how close their resemblance to these or to European forms. It is safest to assign all to the historic Indian save those obtained and proved to have been obtained from the gravels in place.

These three specimens furnish the most satisfactory proofs, so far collected, that a glacial, paleolithic man inhabited the Ohio valley, and upon the evidence of these three slightly shaped stones, obtained from isolated localities, it has been proposed to carry the history of man back some thousands of years farther than can be done by any other means yet discovered.

No careful student will venture to say that the evidence furnished by the three specimens is satisfactory and conclusive. The finds are not demonstrably implements but have the characteristics rather of rejects of manufacture. Their employment as evidence of a paleolithic stage of culture serves only to emphasize the utter inadequacy of the available proofs on that point.

Considering the meagre and unsafe nature of these proofs, there seems little doubt that a glacial man for the Ohio valley has been somewhat prematurely announced and unduly paraded.

W. H. HOLMES.

THE VOLCANIC ROCKS OF THE ANDES.

THROUGH the excellent work of Dr. Richard Küch,' who has recently published the results of his investigation of the rocks collected by Reiss and Stübel in Colombia, we are put in possession of some important conclusions regarding the character of all the volcanic lavas of the South American Andes. Most of these conclusions are pointed out by Dr. Küch in the work cited; to these the present writer wishes to add a few not heretofore noted.

In order to appreciate the value of Küch's work, it should be observed that it was carried on upon the very extensive material collected by Reiss and Stübel during a prolonged exploration of the high mountainous regions of South America, in which they visited Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru and Chili and brought away with them 18,000 specimens. In some places as many as 800 were collected, in others much fewer; for, as Reiss observes in the introduction to the volume upon Colombia, many of the mountains are well nigh inaccessible, their bases being covered with dense forest, and their summits hidden beneath snow and glaciers, and shrouded with clouds the greater part of the year. This is equally true of the Cordilleras farther south, so that the exploration of the region is attended with great difficulties. And while it is not claimed that the collections are complete, they must certainly be taken as representatives of the whole of the Andes.

The volcanoes of Colombia chiefly occur along the crest of the central range, rising above crystalline schists, and eruptive masses in the Cretaceous formation, whose upturned strata compose the ranges east and west of the central Cordillera. Heretofore, with few exceptions, the volcanic rocks examined have

I W. Reiss and A. Stübel: Reisen in Süd - Amerika. Geologische Studien in der Republik Colombia, I. Petrographie. 1. Die Vulkanischen Gesteine bearbeitet von Richard Küch. Berlin, 1892.