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THE INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES

VOLUME LXIX


THE

INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES.

Each book complete in One Volume, 12mo, and bound in Cloth.

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  43. THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS. By Professor Sheldon Amos. $1.75.

  44. ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. By George J. Romanes, M. D., F. R. S. $1.75.

  45. MAN BEFORE METALS. By Professor N. Jolt, Science Faculty of
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  47. FALLACIES: A View of Logic from the Practical Side. By Alfred
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  72. RACE AND LANGUAGE. By Professor André Lefèvre, Anthropological
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New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Filth Avenue.


       *       *       *       *       *


[Illustration: CONTOUR AND GLACIAL MAP OF THE BRITISH ISLES]


                   THE INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES




                                 MAN AND

                           THE GLACIAL PERIOD


                                   BY

                           G. FREDERICK WRIGHT

                       D. D., LL. D., F. G. S. A.


                PROFESSOR IN OBERLIN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
        FORMERLY ASSISTANT ON THE UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
                 AUTHOR OF THE ICE AGE IN NORTH AMERICA.
                   LOGIC OF CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES, ETC.


                   _WITH AN APPENDIX ON TERTIARY MAN_
                        By PROF. HENRY W. HAYNES


                            FULLY ILLUSTRATED


                            _SECOND EDITION_


                                NEW YORK
                         D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

                                  1895


Copyright, 1892,

By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.



  Electrotyped and Printed
  at the Appleton Press, U. S. A.


TO

JUDGE C. C. BALDWIN

PRESIDENT OF THE WESTERN RESERVE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

CLEVELAND

THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED

IN RECOGNITION OF

HIS SAGACIOUS AND UNFAILING INTEREST IN

THE INVESTIGATIONS WHICH HAVE MADE IT POSSIBLE




PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.


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_.

[Footnote A: American Journal of Science, vol. xlvi, pp. 327, 330.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote C: Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, vol. v, pp.
13-16, 281-296; American Journal of Science, vol. xlvii, pp. 33-36.]

[Footnote 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."

[Footnote 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
_pre_glacial, rather than _inter_glacial. 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]

[Footnote 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.

[Footnote 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]

[Footnote 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.

[Footnote I: Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society for August,
1887.]

[Footnote J: American Geologist, vol. viii, p. 241.]

[Footnote K: Transactions of the Leeds Geological Association for
February 10, 1893.]

[Footnote L: Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, August, 1891.]

[Footnote M: Fortnightly Review, November, 1893, p. 633; reprinted in The
Popular Science Monthly, vol. xliv, p. 790.]

[Footnote N: La Période glaciaire (Félix Alcan. Paris, 1889).]

[Footnote O: American Geologist, vol. viii, p. 242.]

[Footnote P: Ibid., p. 241.]

[Footnote Q: Ibid., p. 242.]

[Footnote R: Congrès International d'Archéologie, Moscow, 1892.]

[Footnote S: Nineteenth Century, January, 1894, p. 151, note.]

[Footnote 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.]

[Footnote U: Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. xxxvii,
Part I, pp. 127-150.]

[Footnote V: American Geologist, vol. viii, p. 246.]

[Footnote 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.

[Footnote 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.

[Footnote 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.

[Footnote 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