Mich. He found several caches of leaf-shaped implements, and his description of these (followed by a paper by Dr. Snyder), brought out some interesting points on the presence of finished or unfinished objects in deposits. The implements which Mr. Smith found were not rough disks, such as Dr. Snyder and myself have found in large numbers, but were leaf-shaped, well formed, and gave every evidence of being completed when the ancient owner buried them in the ground.

Monday morning was the day set for the great debate over the existence of Palæolithic Man. This poor individual has been the subject of much discussion, and those of us who are "on the fence" as the politicians here say, are heartily sick of hearing so much said when neither side have much ground for evidence. As far as I am concerned, I would heartily agree with Mr. Volk, a practical field worker himself, who, after sitting through four or five hours of tedious discussion, whispered to a friend, "We should do more digging and less talking." Mr. Volk hit the nail on the head.

There were many men who took part in the discussion. Most of them were authorities, but some knew absolutely nothing, and should have kept out, as their evidence was of no value whatever.

Prof. Putnam was rather inclined to say less than the main participants, Lut made a vigorous defence of Paleoliths, when questioned by Mr. Mercer concerning his opinion as to their antiquity.

The great discussion was between Prof. McGee and Rev. G. F. Wright, both mentioned, Glaciologists. Their papers consumed about half an hour each, and most of us were of the opinion that Rev. Wright had the best of the argument. But when it came to the cross examination, a good many points were shaken by Prof. Chamberlain, of the Chicago University, who is himself a great authority.

Mr. Volk's paper on the occupancy of two periods of a portion of the Delaware Valley, offered some new and valuable field evidence. Mr. Mercer also read another paper, and Dr. Brinton and Warren Upham, another famous Geologist, took part in the discussion.

The existence of paleolithic man is a question which concerns Geologists more than any other problem in archæology, and it is not at all surprising therefore that the session of that Section of Geology largely attended the session of section H. The discussion in the afternoon became rather bitter and personal. We were all relieved when it came to an end. I think it resulted in great good to both sides, for it left many of them who had made rather rash statements in print, little ground to stand on. Every statement made by the one side or the other, which was not entirely true, was challenged. Great caution was shown by both contending parties. Personally, I think it will lead those who are opposed to the existence of such a Man, to regard the evidence as more valuable and conclusive. That it will lead Prof. Wright and his followers to accept nothing but absolute facts, to not generalize upon a few facts, and to search for greater evidences of the existence of Glacial Man. I do not think that the gentlemen shook that testimony for the existence of palæolithic man, but I do think that the nampa image and a number of finds made by incompetent discoverers must be set aside.

It was a matter of regret that Dr. Abbott could not attend and defend his Delaware Valley Ice-age Man. But although this individual may have had but few implements during his existence with which to defend himself, he

never had stauncher friends than some of those who defended him at Madison, Wis. So the Doctor can rest serenely.

I do not wish to convey by these remarks the idea that the whole question of palæolithic man was settled. Prof. Wright, Dr. Brinton, Mercer, Upham, Volk and Putnam, all defended poor old palæolithic man heroically and to a large extent. They gained their points. But some things which they contested were lost. For instance, Prof. Putnam and Chamberlain debated the possibility of an implement falling down through the aperture made by a decayed root. If I might not mistake, Prof. Putnam stated that the hollows made by tree roots invariably filled up sooner or later by the earth falling down, or by the lateral pressure causing lumps to become detached from the sides of the aperture and thus filling the whole thing up. Chamberlain, on the contrary, said that not all holes in the ground caused by the decay of roots, filled immediately, or that it was impossible for an implement to fall down through them. In this statement he was corroborated by several gentlemen, and the defense lost the point. But enough of palæolithic man.

Tuesday morning Mr. Dorsey read two papers, one of them was about Cemetery and Con-Peru, and another concerning some finds on the Island LaPlata. Mr. Dorsey spent eighteen months for Prof. Putnam in South America, and not only his description but his collection from various Inca burying grounds, marks the finest exhibition of either published or other character in the whole anthro-pologie at the Exposition.

Dr. Dorsey read a brief paper upon Osage names of the eight cardinal points; Mr. Mercer read a paper which was published in the "Archæologist" two months ago; Dr. Snyder gave his description of flint disks from Illinois, which was read by the Secretary of the Section. The doctor has done well in preserving an accurate account of all large disk finds in Illinois. His paper was well received.

The usual number of poor papers were received and read, after the custom of the Section, by title.

Space will not permit me to enlarge upon some interesting remarks by Dr. Gastrow. Prof. Putnam and several gentlemen could not attend the meeting. Suffice it to say that in spite of the great attraction so near at hand, the Exposition, the Session, especially Section H, never had a more pleasant or instructive meeting. WARREN K. MOOREHEAD, Sec'y Section H.

DISCOVERY OF ANCIENT ARGILLITE QUARRIES ON THE DELAWARE.

[BY HENRY C. MERCER, DOYLESTOWN, PA,]

The discussion of the Trenton gravel specimens has forced several important questions upon our attention. Where did the argillite come from with which the chipped objects were made? Granted that much of it was found in the river-bed in the shape of boulders and erratic blocks, whence had this material been transported by the river?

To learn that modern Indians on the Delaware quarried jasper and in the process of blade-making strewed the quarry site with "wasters," resembling

in form the Trenton specimens, was to ask whether they also quarried argillite.

We had found argillite "turtle-backs" on the surface at the camp-sites of Gilmer's Island, Gallows Run, Ridges Island, and Lower Black's Eddy on the Delaware, but they lacked the final and convincing association with the quarry to prove their pedigree, and we still sought the whereabouts of the ancient pits, the refuse heaps, and the "rejects" or blocked-out implements which were to repeat in the now famous blue stone, the story of the inchoate blades of jasper.

The way towards an answer to one of the vital questions that concerns the antiquity of man in the Delaware valley was opened on May 22, by the discovery by me of a series of seven or eight depressions surrounded by masses of argillite chips (a quarry in fact with all the surface characteristics of Macungie, Vera Cruz, and Durham, in America, or Grimes Graves, or Spiennes, in Europe) on the steep north slope of the hillside at Point Pleasant, Bucks county, Pennsylvania, on the right bank of Gaddis' Run, about one-quarter mile above its mouth and half a mile from the well-known Indian camp-site at Lower Black's Eddy. The work of carefully clearing out one of the depressions and trenching its refuse heap was begun yesterday afternoon and will occupy an indefinite time.

Notched in the slope whose angle is about 35 degrees, the depression, one of eight or nine others, fronts a solid ledge of argillite (an outcrop of the large vein here traversed and exposed by Gaddis' Run, and twice tapped near by, by modern quarries as the purest source of the material).

Its largest diameter is about thirty feet, its depth five, and breadth eight. The trench begun across its narrowest width, penetrating for 3 feet through loose yellow mould, has shown as yet nothing of importance beyond two bits of charcoal and broken (quartzite pebble) hammer-stones at a depth of one and one-half feet. Another excavation about three feet in diameter has entered the mass of refuse for four feet without reaching its bottom, and discovered at various points thirty-three "turtle-backs," twenty-five broken bases or points, and four hammer-stones. On the surface about the other pits I gathered in a few hours twenty "turtle-backs," six ends or points, and fourteen hammer-stones.

With the work of penetrating to the bottom of the refuse, and studying the ancient quarrying process scarcely begun, I have hardly had time to more than think of the important questions suggested: Who made and worked the quarry? Will it show a successive series of occupations? Can it be connected with the village site at Lower Black's Eddy? What shall we say of these rudely chipped forms? Are they "wasters" and do they of all "wasters" yet heard of, resemble the Trenton specimens?

We are twenty-five miles above Trenton and at the largest and purest outcrop of argillite on the right river bank above that place. The bed of Gaddis' Run and the river-shore below its mouth are thickly strewn with argillite blocks and water-worn boulders-a pathway, in fact, littered with blade material, extending, from the ledge above referred to, to the Indian camp half a mile distant. While the significance of this has been obscurred by chipped fragments from the modern quarrics fallen into the stream, and the stone dressing that has accompanied the building of a dam, two bridges, and a canal aqueduct, there can be little doubt that the inhabitants of the village often

went no farther than a few hundred yards along these beàches for their material.

But too much hangs upon the further examination of this site and the neighboring camp, now at last unfolded to the student in its fuller significance, to warrant a premature word.-SCIENCE, Vol. XXI, No. 540, p. 317, June 9, 1893.

THE EARLIEST EXTENSION OF THE IRON AGE.

In these notes (SCIENCE, March 10) I referred to some recent studies on the early Iron Age in Central Europe. The question still remains, When and how did the art of working iron reach those localities? Two valuable papers of late publication have interesting suggestions touching this point. One is on "Le Premier Age du Fer au Caucase," by M. Ernest Chantre, who for twenty years has travelled, studied and excavated in the Caucasus; the other by M. Louis Siret, scarcely less distinguished for his archæological campaigns in Spain. Some remarkable coincidences are pointed out by both.

M. Chantre finds that the most ancient sepulchres in Lower Chaldea which contain iron are shown by their funerary contents to be contemporaneous with the third and fourth dynasties of Egypt, at which period occur the first signs of this industry on the Nile. At the lowest, this would place them 2500 years, B. C. The knowledge of the metal reached the southern and central vales of the Caucasus about 1500 B. C., through the extension of a "SemitcKushite" people, who were the ancestors of the modern Ossetes. They were distinctly non-Aryans, and the art of working iron was not introduced by them into Europe. Later on, about the seventh century, B. C., their culture was deeply modified by irruptions of Mongolic hordes from the east. (All this in spite of the fact that the modern Ossetes speak an Aryan tongue!)

The proof of this early Semitic influence is found in the identity of art-motives, decorations and methods, and especially in the numerous traces of the worship of the goddess Ishtar, the Astarte of the Phenicians. In the Caucasus, as elsewhere, her favorite symbol, the dove, is constantly met with in ancient tombs; as is also that of the hand, employed in her rites as the symbol of adoration and peace.

It is true, as M. Chantre remarks, that in every station of the earliest iron age in Europe, from Greece to Scandinavia, we find figurines of birds, evidently sacred, and all to be traced to the dove of Astarte. They are proofs of what impressed M. Siret so much in his study of the earliest civilization of the Iberian Peninsula,-"the worship of a female deity represented under various symbols." He also, in his article in L'ANTHROPOLOGIE, 1892, No. 4, is forced by the results of his own excavations to assign this civilization to the daring early navigators of Semitic blood, to the Phonicians, sailing from the far east of the Mediterranean, rounding the rocky shores of Spain in search of tin from the Cassiterrides, or amber from the far-off shores of the Baltic. The first signs of iron there follow without a break on a highly developed bronze period; and its earliest discovered use was as rivets to fasten together plates of bronze. This indicates peaceable introduction and artistic growth, not the result of violence and conquest. The merchant, not the warrior, was the civilizer.-DR. D. G. BRINTON, SCIENCE, Vol. XXI, No. 538, p, 287, May 26, 1893.

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EDITORIAL.

Joe Mulhattons. Throughout this great and glorious land of ours are to be found a number of men professionally engaged as newspaper reporters who delight to belie and hoodwink their readers. The unfolding of a tale exagerated an hundred fold and embellished with impossibilities appears to be a favorite fancy of these knights of the quill. These "Joe Mulhattons" disgrace the profession in which they are engaged, and when found to be guilty of falsehood should be summarily dealt with. The science of Archaeology has for some time attracted their attention, and they derive no greater pleasure than when preparing for the papers a story of a discovery pertaining to times prehistoric, which never has happened. Why the acme of their happiness lies in debasing and placing stumbling blocks in the path of this splendid and ennobling science is to the writer a very great mystery. Dollars and cents may however be the

ten days the writer's attention has been drawn to the report of a discovery of a human skeleton somewhere in Europe whose owner during life attained a height of 25 feet.

Equally rediculous is the reported discovery, in Mexico, of a sort of Acelian harp in the trunk of a tree, made by prehistoric people, which produced a noise so loud that it could be heard for a distance of four miles. Still another story from Kentucky is the unearthing of a number of human bones while digging a well, associated with axes of copper, very good brass and obsidian. With the bones was found the skeleton of a female around whose skull was bound a crown of silver set with an opal cut with skill and of large size and lustre. A lamp of brass into which was cut a curious inscription, Egyptian like, was also found. Even the scarab was engraved on it. A few weeks ago they contrived to find in some far away point in a western desert the remains of a building once upheld by columns so cut as to resemble a rattlesnake. The next discovery will certainly be a bona fide Egyptian city with all its magnificent columns, statues and obelisks. Can not these men make better use of their time? Can they not instead of hoodwinking their readers seek to tell the truth which always stands the test and never fails to elevate humanity? A. F. B.