"In in which they were liable to be struck by | of his investigations is expressed in a few other bodies in the same movement." words in a letter to M. Boucher, dated This is a somewhat vague hypothesis, not 29th November, 1853. Speaking of a supported by experiment or observation; memoir he is preparing, he says: but whatever its value may be as regards this memoir I merely follow in your steps; them, the more artificial forms already and my only ambition is, to prove that found, however few in comparison, are you were correct in announcing that our amply sufficient to destroy the value of country had been inhabited by men before the doubt as affecting the general question. the grand disturbance that caused the deWith regard to the more highly finished struction of the elephants and rhinocerosof those described by Mr. Evans, they es that lived there. What you have said, show a uniformity of shape, a correctness with all the detail required to produce of outline, and a sharpness about the cut- conviction, I have repeated more briefly, ting points and edges, which, in the opin- and no doubt less well." ion of that gentleman, and most of those who have examined them, could not possibly be the result of accidental collision with other flints; and the progress of discovery can not fail very soon to settle all doubt in this matter, since a very few additional facts will decide whether the specimens supposed to be artificial were really the work of intelligent beings, however low in the scale of civilization. na. Mr. Wright has also objected that the mere number of the flakes found in the same locality renders it improbable that they can be other than natural phenomeThat they are unequally distributed is, however, very probable; and it is not difficult to understand that objects of this kind might be drifted into groups, whether accumulated by burial into one place, or merely conveyed and brought together by their similar specific gravity. However this may be, a little further observation will soon clear up whatever doubt remains, and either place the human origin of these flakes, knives, and axes beyond all doubt, or bring some clear proof that they are the results of natural fracture. M. Boucher's book, published in 1847, having failed to attract the attention it certainly deserved, the whole subject seemed to slumber, and both in England and France fairly slipped out of observation for several years. The clever and persevering author, however, feeling that he had right on his side, did not relax in his endeavors to throw fresh light on the important question involved. In 1851, a part of M. Boucher's work was translated, and was published in England; and in 1854 Dr. Rigollot, a French geologist, entered fairly into the subject and satisfied himself as to the geological age of the deposit of gravel, in which no one doubted the remains had been found. The result M. Rigollot was soon followed by others; and in 1857 a second volume was published by M. Boucher, with fresh evidence and new figures of sculptured flints discovered, and extending also the district containing them, which then included the departments of the Somme, the Pas de Calais, the Oise, the Seine, and the Seine Inférieure. Meanwhile our own geologists were also beginning to have their attention directed to the subject. The cave discoveries already alluded to had paved the way for the reconsideration of the evidence; and Dr. Falconer, satisfied that M. Boucher de Perthes deserved some credit for his investigations and specimens, induced Mr. Prestwich to examine the Abbeville sections. Mr. Prestwich, in a memoir read 26th May last before the Royal Society, confesses that he undertook the inquiry fult of doubt, but went to see and judge for himself. He found the gravel-beds of St. Acheul (those that had been most productive in flint implements) capping a low chalk-hill a mile south-east of Amiens, more than one hundred feet above the level of the Somme, and not commanded by any higher ground. The upper beds consisted of about ten to fifteen feet of brown brick-earth, containing many old tombs and some coins, but without organic remains. Under this was a whitish marl and sand, with recent shells and mammalian bones and teeth, whose thickness varied from two to eight feet; while, lastly, there was found six to twelve feet of coarse sub-angular flint gravel, with some remains of shells in sand, and teeth and bones of elephant, horse, ox, and deer, generally near the base. With these he found the worked flints in considerable number; and the whole deposit rests on chalk. Another section of greater interest is described by Mr. Prestwich in the same and brown surface; and it may be noticed, that memoir. It is at Menchecourt, a suburb whenever (as is often the case) any of the ma to the north-west of Abbeville, where the trix adheres to the flint, it is invariably of the same nature, texture, and color as that of the deposit is very distinct in its character, and the association of flint implements at St. Acheul, where there are beds of white and respective beds themselves. In the same way, with recent shells and extinct mammalian others of ochreous gravel, the flint implements remains is unquestionable. The mammal- exhibit corresponding variations in color and ian here include two extinct deers, an ex- adhering matrix; added to which, as the white tinct species of horse, and another of bos, gravel contains chalk debris, there are portions besides the mammoth and tichorhine rhi- of the gravel in which the flints are more or noceros; and there are a few marine shells less coated with a film of deposited carbonate mixed indiscriminately with fresh-water which occur in those portions of the gravel. of lime; and so it is with the flint implements species. Amongst these, in the middle Further, the surface of many specimens is covbeds, at depths varying from sixteen to ered with fine dentritic markings. Some few twenty-two feet from the surface, are flint implements also show, like the fractured flints, flakes of doubtful character; flint knives, traces of wear, their sharp edges being blunted, resembling those found in barrows, and In fact, the flint implements form just as much recognized by archeologists as of artifi-a constituent part of the gravel itself— exhibitcial make; and true flint implements, ing the action of the same later influences, and ("haches,") believed by Mr. Boucher de mass of flint fragments with which they are Perthes to be from the lower bed of sub-associated."-Proceedings of Royal Society for angular flint-gravel, containing the mam- May 26, 1859. malian remains. With regard to the probability of these implements having been imbedded in the gravel from the time of its formation, we append an extract from the memoir of Mr. Prestwich, already cited; which will have the greater weight, as coming from an observer not only thoroughly familiar with his subject, but among the most cautious and careful of the geologists of the day : "Besides the concurrent testimony of all the workmen at the different pits, which the author, (Mr. Prestwich,) after careful examination, saw no reason to doubt, the flint implements (*haches') bear upon themselves internal evidence of the truth of M. de Perthe's opinion. It is a peculiarity of fractured chalk flints to become deeply and permanently stained and colored, or to be left unchanged, according to the nature of the matrix in which they are imbedded. In most clay beds they become outside of a bright opaque white or porcelainic; in white calcareous or silicious sand their fractured black surfaces remain almost unchanged; whilst in beds of ochreous and ferruginous sands, the flints are stained of the light-yellow and deep-brown colors so well exhibited in the common ochreous gravel of the neighborhood of London. This change is the work of very long time, and of moisture before the opening out of the beds. Now in looking over the large series of flint implements in M. de Perthes collection, it can not fail to strike the most casual observer that those from Menchecourt are almost always white and bright, whilst those from Moulin Quignon* have a dull yellow Another locality to the south-east of Abbeville, where worked flints, and a few bones and elephants' in the same force and degree-as the rough All observers are agreed as to the geological age of the gravel and drift deposits in question; and Mr. Prestwich and the English geologists identify them with the gravel at East-Croydon, Wandsworth Common, and other places near London. M. Buteux, author of a careful memoir on the geology of the department of the Somme, and M. Herbert, whose special study has been the deposits of the latest tertiary period, (terrains quaternaires of French geologists,) being called on by Dr. Rigollot to examine rigorously the Position of the bed, state that "the implements are found neither in the loam nor brick earth forming the upper bed, nor in the intermediate beds of clay, sand, and small flints, but exclusively in the true diluvium, that is, in the deposit which contains the remains of species belonging to the epoch immediately preceding the cataclysm by which they were destroyed. There can not be the smallest doubt as to the point." (Antiquities celtiques, vol. ii. p. 9.) It is curious to watch with how much difficulty evidence makes its way against preconceived notions. One tenth part of the testimony that has been produced in reference to the facts just narrated would have sufficed to admit almost any statement in general science; but notwithstanding the evidence previously adduced teeth, have been found in the lower part of a ferruginous gravel and sand on the top of a low hill. not also human bones mixed with those of the quadrupeds? To this a very pertinent reply is given in the introduction to M. Boucher's second volume; and it is one which every geologist at least must appreciate. He says: we find another French geologist adding | ufactured, leading to the inference of his confirmation, as if the subject were human inhabitants cotemporaneous with still in dispute. M. Gaudry, a member the cavern and gravel animals, are there of the French Institute, accompanied by M. Garnier, librarian of the city of Amiens, and two other gentlemen, went over the same ground as had been previously traveled by Mr. Prestwich and M. Buteux; and the former reported at a meeting of the Academy on the third October last, that he caused the face of the quarry at St. Acheul to be opened for the length of seven métres, he himself watching the whole operation, and not leaving the ground while the work was going on. The head of brick earth, amounting to about one and a half métres, had been removed, and there remained a thickness of two metres before reaching the true drift deposit. Nothing whatever was found in this overlying bed; but no less than nine of the flint implements were obtained in a flinty bed, reposing on white sand, about a métre below the top of the underlying deposit of drift. The flints thus obtained could not have been rolled, their edges being still sharp; and in the same bed, at a little distance, were found remains of rhinoceros, hippopotamus, and mammoth. Thus, then, there would appear no reasonable doubt that the discoveries of M. Boucher de Perthes, announced some twelve years ago, put prominently before the world in a book written for the purpose of attracting attention to the subject, and supported by specimens offered for inspection to all who would inquire, illustrated also by a vast series of drawings, but quietly set aside by every body except a few friends of the author, were really among the most remarkable discoveries ever made in geological and archæological science, and were calculated to throw the greatest light on the last great revolutions of the globe. Per haps, indeed, if M. Boucher had been contented to give his facts simply, or with their necessary inferences, without overlaying them with elaborate explanations, and making them the foundation of the ories, he might have been more successful; but however this may be, the facts have at last made their way, and are fairly afloat for general discussion. To statements of this kind there are always, and properly, many objections raised. It has been asked, Why, if the flints are in situ, and were certainly man "Have patience. Before the time of Cuvier, who could have imagined that at Montmartre older tertiary period? Had any one asserted were hidden thousands of quadrupeds of the their existence, and especially the fact that they represented species of animals long since extinet, would not every body have refused belief? And even now, would the very possibility of the event be denied if any one were to assert the recent discovery of a heap of human bones under similar conditions? But there is no reason for this; for if not true today, it may be to-morrow, and if not in Paris or France, it will be elsewhere. Yes, this discovery must take place; and nothing but some retreat of the waters of a lake or a bay, some uplifting of a mountain mass, is needed to profor duce, not one skeleton only, but thousands; the abundance of their monuments in stone, their knives and other implements, sufficiently prove that there was a large as well as an ancient population."-Antiquities celtiques, vol. ii. Avant-propos, p. xiii. Other reasons might be given why further discoveries have not yet been made; but it is quite unnecessary, for the absence of organic remains in deposits of all ages has been so frequently proved by experience to have no further meaning than that they have not yet been discovered, that it would be idle to waste time in remarking upon it. Bringing together the various threads of discovery and investigation in reference to the whole subject, we find abundant proof, first, that races of men sufficiently civilized to manufacture brick and pottery inhabited Egypt many thousand years before the building of Memphisitself an event of some thousand years standing; secondly, that races of men capable of manufacturing knives and implements out of flint preceded by a very long interval the earliest tribes of which we have any historic record as inhabiting Western Europe; thirdly, that the im plements manufactured by these ancient tribes were buried in gravel and in caverns, in association with the remains of numerous large quadrupeds now extinct; and lastly, that these extinct animals ap pear to have lived at a time when there were not only men, but numerous recent shells, land, fresh-water, and marine, not in any way differing from existing common species. As the case at present stands, it is considered by Mr. Prestwich to be perfectly consistent with known facts, that the men and quadrupeds of the last great geological period may have been brought to a sudden end by a temporary inundation of the land; but the actual date of such an event, if it occurred on a large scale, must have been very much farther back than any present human chronology would admit. There seems, however, no reason to assume that such sudden inundation could have been other than very partial; and, as already stated, it could not have been very rapid. The duration of the human race is, at any rate, carried back by these investigations a very large number of years; although, as far as we know, it was a comparatively recent event, geologically speaking, and one which belongs to the very latest of the numerous geological periods. The extinct quadrupeds may possibly have been in existence at a date much more recent than we have been accustomed to think, and may only have been destroyed owing to their development locally under exceptional conditions, and the sudden termination of these favorable circum stances. It must not, indeed, be lost sight of, that cavern deposits containing bones of gigantic extinct quadrupeds are found in other countries than Western Europe, and that recent deposits containing them exist in the southern as well as the northern hemisphere. The great animals of our gravel certainly ranged through all Southern as well as Western Europe; and very similar species were equally common under similar conditions in North America. Asia has yielded two curious groups: one found in the flanks of the Himalayan chain, ranging from Bombay in the west to the banks of the Irawaddy in the east; and the other occupying the shores of the frozen seas and the mouths of the large rivers running northwards to the Pole. South-America has its megatherian group, and Australia its marsupial; while New-Zealand presents us with gigantic birds scarcely yet lost. Every where we see indications of a remarkable period, whether suddenly or slowly ter minated no one can yet say; but it is only now that we are beginning to discover amongst the remains of these singular groups indications of half-civilized men, who, like the animals of lower organization, seem to have died out, and were subsequently replaced by others to whom a higher destiny was open. Careful inquiry, properly directed, may discover amongst the various gravels and deposits containing these remains some further indications of men, if not actual portions of human skeletons; and we may yet hope to read the history of our race in its infancy by records more varied and more suggestive than the rude flintknives hitherto found. At any rate, it is no trifling addition to the wide field of geological investigation, that these great questions of archaeology and history are included within its domain. But let us go a little further, and endeavor to make out somewhat more distinctly the associates of man during this period of drift and filling up of caverns. We may thus obtain an idea perhaps more clear and satisfactory both of the extent of the change in other animuls, and the time that may be assumed to have been needed to produce such change without any violent disturbance of the natural order of things. At this period, then, whatever the case may be with regard to the human race, there was, in what is now Western Europe, a large district occupied by land, although much of what is now land was then certainly covered by the sea. On this land, a portion of which reached to the latitude of Central Europe, the climate must have been excessively cold— almost arctic in the inhospitable mountains of ice every where advancing towards the sea. Still further to the south were numerous islands, if not continuous land, covered with vegetation and peopled with various tribes of quadrupeds and birds, and probably (as we have seen) not without human inhabitants. These islands occupied chiefly those spots now at a great elevation above the sea, the lower plains being submerged, though probably not so deeply but that the icebergs would be stranded upon the numerous shoals that then approached the surface. The central plain of Europe, a large part of Asia north of the great Himalayan chain, an extensive tract of North-America, a broad strip of South America east of the Andes, from the river | great cavern-bear, as the larger extinct. La Plata southwards, and a part-no one species is called, must have equaled in can at present tell how large a part-of size a large horse; and though certainly Australia, were all then under water. It very powerful, and from the structure of was on the portions of the ocean-floor of its teeth and extremities able to defend that day, defined as above, that the great itself against enemies, it probably fed deposits of the drift period took place. more on vegetable than animal food, in The floor is since raised, and the ocean this also resembling the grisly bear. has left it; some of the ancient land is now submerged, while other parts form the mountain-tops; the sea now brings warm water instead of ice to our shores, and the drifted icebergs deposit their load in the middle of the broad Atlantic, instead of on shoals a thousand miles to the east or west. The climate has changed entirely; the vegetation and the inhabitants of land and sea have also changed more or less; but man, with his power of modifying his habits to his climate, has remained; and many animals of lower organization, moving freely in water, and able to find for themselves those conditions of climate and food that are favorable, have also remained as his cotemporaries. It will be interesting to inquire what were those animals that were associated with man during this period, which is historically so remote, but geologically very recent-animals, many of which have since died out, leaving no direct and unaltered descendants on the earth. They include some of many kinds, large and small, belonging to various countries; but it will not be possible to allude here to more than a few of the more remarkable varieties. In the caves both of England and Germany, bones of bats are found buried with other bones under the stalagmite, as well as amongst the superficial mud. Two species at least are made out; one of them, the "great bat" of English naturalists, still living in similar places, and the other, the horse-shoe bat, also living still. In these curious animals, limited in distribution to sheltered and dark places, there has been, then, but little change. Bears of at least three kinds, certainly inhabited the land during the drift period. The brown bear of North-Europe, which is said to have lived in Scotland less than a thousand years ago, had already been introduced, and was accompanied by two other species, both since extinct; one of them smaller and less fierce, the other much larger, and more resembling the griz zly bear of north-western America. The VOL. L.-No. 1 The badger, the polecat, and the stoat flourished with the three species of bear above described, but seem not to have since undergone any change, resisting the alteration of climate and the gradual increase of the human race better than the larger animals of approximate habits. Bones of all of them are found buried in caverns with those of extinct races. The otter was another existing species which at that time had been introduced into Europe, and has not since been destroyed. Wolves abounded during the deposit of the drift, and can not yet be said to have passed away, except where the cultivation of land has rendered their existence impossible. The same species now common throughout Northern Europe then ranged over England also, and unmerous individuals have left bones and teeth in the caves by the side of those of the bears, and also of the common dog, of which latter there seem to have been already many varieties, and of the fox. The hyena is an animal combining many of the peculiarities of the canine and feline races. The largest of the groups to which it belongs, it includes species less destructive than many, the animals seeking rather dead carrion than the living prey. The teeth of the hyenas are admirably adapted to gnaw and crush bones, and the muscles of the jaw point out this as an important habit. At present animals of this kind are confined to Africa and the parts of Asia adjacent. Two wellmarked species and one other are known; one only, the striped hyena, inhabiting Northern Africa and Asia, and the others found in South-Africa near the Cape. One very remarkable extinct species, more like the spotted hyena of the south than the striped species of the north of Africa, has left abundant remains in caverns among the fossils of the drift period. This last species has been found in the principal caverns of England, Germany, France, and Belgium, and also in the unstratified drift of the same period. It is singular enough that the specimens from the latter localities are in a tolerably perfect state, 2 |