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CHAPTEE XL 



RIVER-DRIFT GRAVEL-BEDS. 



"TTTHILE we have been straining our eyes to the East, and 

 T T eagerly watching excavations in Egypt and Assyria, 

 suddenly a new light has arisen in the midst of us ; and the 

 oldest relics of man yet discovered have occurred, not among 

 the ruins of Nineveh or Heliopolis, not on the sandy plains 

 of the Nile or the Euphrates, but in the pleasant valleys of 

 England and France, along the banks of the Seine and the 

 Somme, the Thames and the Waveney. 



So unexpected were these discoveries, so irreconcilable with 

 even the greatest antiquity until lately assigned to the human 

 race, that they were long regarded with neglect and suspicion. 

 M. Boucher de Perthes, to whom we are principally indebted 

 for this great step in the history of mankind, observed, as 

 long ago as the year 1841, in some sand containing mamma- 

 lian remains, at Menchecourt, near Abbeville, a flint, rudely 

 fashioned into a cutting instrument. In the following years 

 other weapons were found under similar circumstances, and 

 especially during the formation of the Champ de Mars at 

 Abbeville, where a large quantity of gravel was moved and 

 many of the so-called " hatchets" were discovered. In the 

 year 1846, M. Boucher de Perthes published his first work on 

 the subject, entitled " De 1'Industrie Primitive, ou les Arts et 

 leur Origine." In this he announced that he had found human 

 implements in beds unmistakably belonging to the age of 

 the drift. In his "Antiquites Celtiques et Antediluviennes" 

 (1847), he also gave numerous illustrations of these stone 



