Each book complete in One Volume, 12mo, and bound in Cloth. New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Filth Avenue. THE INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES MAN AND BY D. D., LL. D., F. G. S. A. PROFESSOR IN OBERLIN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY WITH AN APPENDIX ON TERTIARY MAN FULLY ILLUSTRATED SECOND EDITION Copyright, 1892, By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. Electrotyped and Printed TO PRESIDENT OF THE WESTERN RESERVE HISTORICAL SOCIETY Since, as stated in the Introduction (page 1), the plan of this volume permitted only “a concise presentation of the facts,” it was impossible to introduce either full references to the illimitable literature of the subject or detailed discussion of all disputed points. The facts selected, therefore, were for the most part those upon which it was supposed there would be pretty general agreement. The discussion upon the subject of the continuity of the Glacial period was, however, somewhat elaborate (see pages 106-121, 311, 324, 332), and was presented with excessive respect for the authority of those who maintain the opposite view; all that was claimed (page 110) being that one might maintain the unity or continuity of the Glacial period “without forfeiting his right to the respect of his fellow-geologists.” But it already appears that there was no need of this extreme modesty of statement. On the contrary, the vigorous discussion of the subject which has characterized the last two years reveals a decided reaction against the theory that there has been more than one Glacial epoch in Quaternary times; while there have been brought to light many most important if not conclusive facts in favour of the theory supported in the volume. In America the continuity of the Glacial period has been maintained during the past two years with important new evidence, among others by authorities of no less eminence and special experience in glacial investigations than Professor Dana,[A] Mr. Warren Upham,[B] and Professor Edward H. Williams, Jr.[C] Professor Williams’s investigations on the attenuated border of the glacial deposits in the Lehigh, the most important upper tributary to the Delaware Valley, Pa., are of important significance, since the area which he so carefully studied lies wholly south of the terminal moraine of Lewis and Wright, and belongs to the portion of the older drift which Professors Chamberlin and Salisbury have been most positive in assigning to the first Glacial epoch, which they have maintained was separated from the second epoch by a length of time sufficient for the streams to erode rock gorges in the Delaware and Lehigh Rivers from two hundred to three hundred feet in depth.[D] But Professor Williams has found that the rock gorges of the Lehigh, and even of its southern tributaries, had been worn down approximately to the present depth of that of the Delaware before this earliest period of glaciation, and that the gorges were filled with the earliest glacial dÉbris. [A] American Journal of Science, vol. xlvi, pp. 327, 330. [B] American Journal of Science, vols, xlvi, pp. 114-121; xlvii, pp. 358-365; American Geologist, vols, x, pp. 339-362, especially pp. 361, 362; xiii, pp. 114, 278; Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, vol. v, pp. 71-86, 87-100. [C] Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, vol. v, pp. 13-16, 281-296; American Journal of Science, vol. xlvii, pp. 33-36. [D] See especially Chamberlin, in the American Journal of Science, vol. xlv, p. 192; Salisbury, in the American Geologist, vol. xi, p. 18. A similar relation of the glacial deposits of the attenuated border to the preglacial erosion of the rock gorges of the Alleghany and upper Ohio Rivers has been brought to light by the joint investigations of Mr. Frank Leverett and myself in western Pennsylvania, in the vicinity of Warren, Pa., where, in an area which was affected by only the earliest glaciation, glacial deposits are found filling the rock channels of old tributaries to the Alleghany to a depth of from one hundred and seventy to two hundred and fifty feet, and carrying the preglacial erosion at that point very closely, if not quite, down to the present rock bottoms of all the streams. This removes from Professor Chamberlin a most important part of the evidence of a long interglacial period to which he had appealed; he having maintained[E] that “the higher glacial gravels antedated those of the moraine-forming epoch by the measure of the erosion of the channel through the old drift and the rock, whose mean depth here is about three hundred feet, of which perhaps two hundred and fifty feet may be said to be rock,” adding that the “excavation that intervened between the two epochs in other portions of the Alleghany, Monongahela, and upper Ohio valleys is closely comparable with this.” [E] Bulletin 58 of the United States Geological Survey, p. 35; American Journal of Science, vol. xlv, p. 195. These observations of Mr. Leverett and myself seem to demonstrate the position maintained in the volume (page 218), namely, that the inner precipitous rock gorges of the upper Ohio and its tributaries are mainly preglacial, rather than interglacial. The only way in which Professor Chamberlin can in any degree break the force of this discovery is by assuming that in preglacial times the present narrow rock gorges of the Alleghany and the Ohio were not continuous, but that (as indicated in the present volume on page 206) the drainage of various portions of that region was by northern outlets to the Lake Erie basin, leaving, on this supposition, the cols between two or three drainage areas to be lowered in glacial or interglacial time. On the theory of continuity the erosion of these cols would have been rapidly effected by the reversed drainage consequent upon the arrival of the ice-front at the southern shore of the Lake Erie basin. During all the time elapsing thereafter, until the ice had reached its southern limit, the stream was also augmented by the annual partial melting of the advancing glacier which was constantly bringing into the valley the frozen precipitation of the far north. The distance is from thirty to seventy miles, so that a moderately slow advance of the ice at that stage would afford time for a great amount of erosion before sufficient northern gravel had reached the region to begin the filling of the gorge.[F] [F] See an elaborate discussion of the subject in its new phases by Chamberlin and Leverett, in the American Journal of Science, vol. xlvii, pp. 247-283. Mr. Leverett also presented an important paper before the Geological Society of America at its meeting at Madison, Wis., in August, 1893, adducing evidence which, he thinks, goes to prove that the post-glacial erosion in the earlier drift in the region of Rock River, Ill., was seven or eight times as much as that in the later drift farther north; while Mr. Oscar H. Hershey arrives at nearly the same conclusions from a study of the buried channels in northwestern Illinois.[G] But even if these estimates are approximately correct—which is by no means certain—they only prove the length of the Glacial period, and not necessarily its discontinuity. [G] American Geologist, vol. xii, p. 314f. Other important evidence to a similar effect is given by Mr. Leverett, in an article on The Glacial Succession in Ohio, Journal of Geology, vol. i, pp. 129-146. At the same time it should be said that these investigations in western Pennsylvania somewhat modify a portion of the discussion in the present volume concerning the effects of the Cincinnati ice-dam. It now appears that the full extent of the gravel terraces of glacial origin in the Alleghany River had not before been fully appreciated, since they are nearly continuous on the two-hundred-foot rock shelf, and are often as much as eighty feet thick. It seems probable, therefore, that the Alleghany and upper Ohio gorge was filled with glacial gravel to a depth of about two hundred and fifty or three hundred feet, as far down at least as Wheeling, W. Va. If this was the case, it would obviate the necessity of bringing in the Cincinnati ice-dam (as set forth in pages 212-216) to account directly for all the phenomena in that region, except as this obstruction at Cincinnati would greatly facilitate the silting up of the gorge. The simple accumulation of glacial gravel in the Alleghany gorge would of itself dam up the Monongahela at Pittsburg, so as to produce the results detailed by Professor White on page 215.[H] [H] For a full discussion of these topics, see paper by Professor B. C. Jillson, Transactions of the Academy of Science and Art of Pittsburg, December 8, 1893; G. F. Wright, American Journal of Science, vol. xlvii, pp. 161-187; especially pp. 177, 178; The Popular Science Monthly, vol. xlv, pp. 184-198. Of European authorities who have recently favoured the theory of the continuity of the Quaternary Glacial period, as maintained in the volume, it is enough to mention the names of Prestwich,[I] Hughes,[J] Kendall,[K] Lamplugh,[L] and Wallace,[M] of England; Falsan,[N] of France; Holst,[O] of Sweden; Credner[P] and Diener,[Q] of Germany; and Nikitin[R] and Kropotkin,[S] of Russia.[T] Among leading authorities still favouring a succession of Glacial epochs are: Professor James Geikie,[U] of Scotland; Baron de Geer,[V] of Sweden; and Professor Felix Wahnschaffe,[W] of Germany. [I] Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society for August, 1887. [J] American Geologist, vol. viii, p. 241. [K] Transactions of the Leeds Geological Association for February 10, 1893. [L] Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, August, 1891. [M] Fortnightly Review, November, 1893, p. 633; reprinted in The Popular Science Monthly, vol. xliv, p. 790. [N] La PÉriode glaciaire (FÉlix Alcan. Paris, 1889). [O] American Geologist, vol. viii, p. 242. [P] Ibid., p. 241. [Q] Ibid., p. 242. [R] CongrÈs International d’ArchÉologie, Moscow, 1892. [S] Nineteenth Century, January, 1894, p. 151, note. [T] The volume The Glacial Geology of Great Britain and Ireland, edited from the unpublished MSS. of the late Henry Carvill Lewis (London, Longmans, Green & Co., 1894), adds much important evidence in favour of the continuity of the Glacial epoch; see especially pp. 187, 460, 461, 466. [U] Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. xxxvii, Part I, pp. 127-150. [V] American Geologist, vol. viii, p. 246. [W] Forschungen zur deutschen Landes und Volkskunde von Dr. A. Kirchhoff. Bd. vi, Heft i. When the first edition was issued, two years ago, there seemed to be a general acceptance of all the facts detailed in it which directly connected man with the Glacial period both in America and in Europe; and, indeed, I had studiously limited myself to such facts as had been so long and so fully before the public that there would seem to be no necessity for going again into the details of evidence relating to them. It appears, however, that this confidence was ill-founded; for the publication of the book seems to have been the signal for a confident challenge, by Mr. W. H. Holmes, of all the American evidence, with intimations that the European also was very likely equally defective.[X] In particular Mr. Holmes denies the conclusiveness of the evidence of glacial man adduced by Dr. Abbott and others at Trenton, N. J.; Dr. Metz, at Madisonville, Ohio; Mr. Mills, at Newcomerstown, Ohio; and Miss Babbitt, at Little Falls, Minn. [X] Journal of Geology, vol. i, pp. 15-37, 147-163; American Geologist, vol. xi, pp. 219-240. The sum of Mr. Holmes’s effort amounts, however, to little more than the statement that, with a limited amount of time and labour, neither he nor his assistants had been able to find any implements in undisturbed gravel in any of these places; and the suggestion of various ways in which he thinks it possible that the observers mentioned may have been deceived as to the original position of the implements found. But, as had been amply and repeatedly published,[Y] Professor J. D. Whitney, Professor Lucien Carr, Professor N. S. Shaler, Professor F. W. Putnam, of Harvard University, besides Dr. C. C. Abbott, all expressly and with minute detail describe finding implements in the undisturbed gravel at Trenton, which no one denies to be of glacial origin. In the face of such testimony, which had been before the public and freely discussed for several years, it is an arduous undertaking for Mr. Holmes to claim that none of the implements have been found in place, because he and his assistants (whose opportunities for observation had scarcely been one twentieth part as great as those of the others) failed to find any. To see how carefully the original observations were made, one has but to read the reports to Professor Putnam which have from time to time appeared in the Proceedings of the Peabody Museum and of the Boston Society of Natural History,, and which are partially summed up in the thirty-second chapter of Dr. Abbott’s volume on Primitive Industry. [Y] Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History, vol. xxi, January 19, 1881; Report of the Peabody Museum, vol. ii, pp. 44-47; chap, xxxii of Abbott’s Primitive Industry; American Geologist, vol. xi, pp. 180-184. In the case of the discovery at Newcomerstown, Mr. Holmes is peculiarly unfortunate in his efforts to present the facts, since, in endeavouring to represent the conditions under which the implement was found by Mr. Mills, he has relied upon an imaginary drawing of his own, in which an utterly impossible state of things is pictured. The claim of Mr. Holmes in this case, as in the other, is that possibly the gravel in which the implements were found had been disturbed. In some cases, as in Little Falls and at Madison ville, he thinks the implements may have worked down to a depth of several feet by the overturning of trees or by the decay of the tap-root of trees. A sufficient answer to these suggestions is, that Mr. Holmes is able to find no instance in which the overturning of trees has disturbed the soil to a depth of more than three or four feet, while some of the implements in these places had been found buried from eight to sixteen feet. Even if, as Mr. Chamberlin suggests,[Z] fifty generations of trees have decayed on the spot since the retreat of the ice, it is difficult to see how that would help the matter, since the effect could not be cumulative, and fifty upturnings of three or four feet would not produce the results of one upturning of eight feet. Moreover, at Trenton, where the upturning of trees and the decaying of tap-roots would have been as likely as anywhere to bury implements, none of those of flint or jasper (which occur upon the surface by tens of thousands) are buried more than a foot in depth; while the argillite implements occur as low down as fifteen or twenty feet. This limitation of flint and jasper implements to the surface is conclusively shown not only by Dr. Abbott’s discoveries, but also by the extensive excavations at Trenton of Mr. Ernest Volk, whose collections formed so prominent a part of Professor Putnam’s PalÆolithic exhibit at the Columbian Exposition at Chicago. In the village sites explored by Mr. Volk, argillite was the exclusive material of the implements found in the lower strata of gravel. Similar results are indicated by the excavations of Mr. H. C. Mercer at Point Pleasant, Pa., about twenty miles above Trenton, where, in the lower strata, the argillite specimens are sixty-one times more numerous than the jasper are. [Z] American Geologist, vol. xi, p. 188. To discredit the discoveries at Trenton and Newcomerstown, Mr. Holmes relies largely upon the theory that portions of gravel from the surface had slid down to the bottom of the terrace, carrying implements with them, and forming a talus, which, he thinks, Mr. Mills, Dr. Abbott, and the others have mistaken for undisturbed strata of gravel. In his drawings Mr. Holmes has even represented the gravel at Newcomerstown as caving down into a talus without disturbing the strata to any great extent, and at the same time he speaks slightingly of the promise which I had made to publish a photograph of the bank as it really was. In answer, it is sufficient to give, first, the drawing made at the time by Mr. Mills, to show the general situation of the gravel bank at Newcomerstown, in which the implement figured on page 252 was found; and, secondly, an engraving from a photograph of the bank, taken by Mr. Mills after the discovery of the implement, but before the talus had obscured its face. The implement was found by Mr. Mills with its point projecting from a fresh exposure of the terrace, just after a mass, loosened by his own efforts, had fallen away. The gravel is of such consistency that every sign of stratification disappears when it falls down, and there could be no occasion for a mistake even by an ordinary observer, while Mr. Mills was a well-trained geologist and collector, making his notes upon the spot.[AA] [AA] The Popular Science Monthly, vol. xliii, pp. 29-39. |