Not being a geologist, it would be presumptuous for me to pass opinion on questions in which geology played prominent part. What little is offered, therefore, is based upon study of man’s handiwork and distribution of his implements rather than upon geologic evidence. There has been not a little said concerning the observations of Mr. Ernest Volk and Dr. Charles C. Abbott in New Jersey, as both of these men have labored for many years near Trenton, upon fields and in the sands and gravels. Recently Dr. Abbott published three pamphlets.[34] There are some personalities in these pamphlets which might have been omitted, and one or two statements to which some persons might object. But on the whole these three pamphlets sum up all of Dr. Abbott’s observations during the past thirty years, with reference to New Jersey archæology and the antiquity of man in the Delaware Valley. Waiving these minor considerations, which no broad-minded man would treasure up against Dr. Abbott, we may safely assume that both he and Mr. Volk are real archæologists. That is, they understand conditions as they existed in ancient times, and that is something that few men of to-day grasp. It cannot be learned from reading the reports, from studying in museums, or through obtaining a degree from one of our universities. Both Volk and Abbott have worked hard. There was no fuss made about it. It was a continuous grind day after day, week in and week out, year upon year. [Illustration: FIG. 723. (S. about 1–3.) A remarkably well-preserved gourd water-jug. Found in the ashes of Salts Cave, Kentucky. B. H. Young’s collection, Louisville, Kentucky. ] No man can dig a pit in the ground and fill it up so that it conforms to the surrounding natural strata. Such a place always shows disturbed soil or clay. Walk along the riverbank, where the water has washed out a line of fence and left the marks of the post-holes, and observe; note gravel-banks anywhere in this country where aborigines buried in graves, and as white men haul away the gravel and expose the bank, one is able to see clearly defined the outlines of the graves. The same is true of the holes of burrowing animals and of tree-roots, etc. The beds of streams mentioned by Dr. Abbott in his work play an important part in archæology. When the implements found in them were lost, the streams were active. Since then they have filled up. The character of one deposit in the Delaware Valley investigated by Abbott and Volk differs from that of another, and the differences are so striking, the deposits being in the one place sand, and in another place glacial clay, in another place river gravel, that one cannot but believe that a considerable period of time elapsed between these various cultures.