Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/572

552 weekly papers of the higher class, articles of popular zoölogical character. In 1883, Dr. Brinton, of Philadelphia, read a paper on "Palæolithic Implements," by Dr. Abbott, at the meeting of the Congress des Americanistes, in Copenhagen.

In 1881, Dr. Abbott published his first volume, "Primitive Industry, or Illustrations of the Handiwork in Stone, Bone, and Clay, of the Native Races of the Northern Atlantic Seaboard of America." Pp. 560. Illustrations 426. George A. Bates, Salem, Massachusetts.

The work may be said to be the natural outcome of the fact that the author lives in a neighborhood once densely populated by the Indians; but its appearance was also expedited, if not occasioned, by the encouragement which he received from the Peabddy Museum, at Cambridge, in prosecuting an exhaustive search for traces of man in the valley of the Delaware.

The collection of stone implements made by Dr. Abbott in New Jersey was placed, years ago, in the Peabody Museum at Cambridge, and has since been added to yearly, until now fully twenty thousand specimens are on exhibition. It has recently been said of it in "Science," that it "is one of the most important series of the kind ever brought together, and one which archæologists will consult for all time to come."

The volume is composed really of three parts; and the aim of the author is to show that, during the close of the Glacial Epoch, if not earlier, man, associated with arctic mammals, occupied the valley of the river; this being indicated by the occurrence in the gravels of stone implements alike in character with the palæolithic implements of Europe, but made of dense argillite, instead of flint; later, as attested by a class of better finished objects made of argillite, and as a class found under circumstances indicating antiquity greater than the ordinary surface-found Indian relic; lastly, the ordinary jasper and quartz arrow-heads and sandstone axes of the Indians proper.

Since the publication of the book, a vast deal of material has been gathered, and the result has been to confirm the views expressed in the volume. A fragment of a human cranium, a lower jaw, a tooth, and lately a fragment of a human temporal bone, have been taken from the implement-bearing gravels. A critical reviewer, in the "Nation," has said of the volume: "It is a valuable addition to the sum of our knowledge of aboriginal man; . . . as such, it is abundantly worthy of a place beside Mr. Evan's elaborate treatise on the 'Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain.'"

In 1884 was published "A Naturalist's Rambles about Home" by D. Appleton & Co., New York. It is a selection, in part, from many contributions to zoölogical journals, but also contains much original matter. It is exclusively "field" studies, and results of daily observations of the animal life about the author's home.