The expectation of finding evidence of preglacial man in Ohio was justified soon after this (in 1885), when Dr. C L. Metz, while co-co-operating with Professor F. W. Putnam, of the Peabody Museum, Cambridge, Mass., in field work, discovered a flint implement of palæolithic type in undisturbed strata of the glacial terrace of the Little Miami River, near his residence at Madisonville, Ohio. In 1887 Dr. Metz found another implement in the terrace of the same river, at Loveland, about twenty-five miles farther up the stream. The implement at Madisonville occurred eight feet below the surface, and about a mile back from the edge of the terrace; while that at Loveland was found in a coarser deposit, about a quarter of a mile back from the present stream, and thirty feet below the surface. Mastodon-bones also were discovered in close proximity to the implement at Loveland.
Fig. 70.
Interest in these investigations was still further increased by the report of Mr. Hilborne T. Cresson, of Philadelphia, that in 1886, with my map of the glaciated region in hand, he had found an implement of palæolithic type in undisturbed strata of the glacial terrace bordering the East Branch of White River, near the glacial boundary at Medora, Jackson County, Ind. The terrace was about fifty feet above the flood-plain of the river.
Later still, in October, 1889, Mr. W. C. Mills, of Newcomerstown, Tuscarawas County, Ohio, found in that town a finely shaped flint implement sixteen feet below the surface of the terrace of glacial gravel which lines the margin of the Tuscarawas Valley.[CT] Mr. Mills was not aware of the importance of this discovery until meeting with me some months later, when he described the situation to me, and soon after sent the implement for examination. In company with Judge C. C. Baldwin, President of the Western Reserve Historical Society, and several others, a visit was made to Mr. Mills, and we carefully examined the gravel-pit in which the implement occurred, and collected evidence which was abundant to corroborate all his statements. The implement in question is made from a peculiar flint which is found in the Lower Mercer limestone, of which there are outcrops a few miles distant, and it resembles in so many ways the typical implements found by Boucher de Perthes, at Abbeville, that, except for the difference in the material from which it is made, it would be impossible to distinguish it from them. The similarity of pattern is too minute to have originated except from imitation.
[CT] For typical section of a glacial terrace in Ohio, see [p. 227].