The prominence of the supraorbital ridges or bony brows is, next to the receding character of the forehead, the most notable feature of this primitive type.
“Neither the projections of the supraorbital ridges, nor the receding forehead, is an Indian characteristic,” says Henry F. Osborn, professor of zoölogy in Columbia University and curator in the American Museum of Natural History. Doctor Osborn was one of the first to go to Omaha and study this remarkable skull when it was found eight years ago.
The age of this skull is established by its association with the layer of clay drift in which it was found. Doctor E. H. Barbour, head professor of geology of the University of Nebraska, went over the ground thoroughly and helped to excavate many of the fragments of the Loess man some ten miles north of Omaha.[Pg 65]
“From the geologist’s standpoint,” says Doctor Barbour, “these bone fragments were not buried. Instead, the bones were doubtless deposited with the Loess, the age of which may be safely reckoned at ten to twenty thousand years or more, and the bones are at least as ancient as this formation.”
Somewhere in its mighty course the glacier picked up these fragments of skulls and a few arm and leg bones and rolled them along with the rest of the drift, to be deposited solidly in the Loess clay when the bluff was built.
Old Paymaster Says Farewell.
Amos Hershey has just retired as postmaster of Gordonville, Pa., ending a period of fifty-five years of service for the United States postal department.
In 1860, before the Civil War, Mr. Hershey, then sixteen years of age, entered the employ of John K. Smoker, in a general merchandise store. At the same time he became one of the clerks in the post office. Five years later Hershey purchased the store business from Smoker and was himself appointed postmaster. He received his commission from William Dennison, postmaster general under President Lincoln.
The efficiency of the post-office department in that day was very crude toward what it has become in later years. When Mr. Hershey first entered the service, there were no railway mail cars. In fact, it was only in 1860 that an arrangement was made with the railroads to run a mail train between New York and Washington, the only advantage of which was the quick transfer of mail matter from one large place to another. The traveling post office, where mails are assorted when going at fifty miles an hour, had not yet come.
It was several years later that a Mr. Davis, of the St. Joseph, Mo., post-office force, broached the thought that considerable valuable time would be saved if the overland mail could be sorted on the cars, and made up for offices at the end of and along the routes. The department allowed him to carry out this idea, which, starting in such a humble way, is now one of the most important branches of the department.