304 ST. ACHEUL. 



perhaps, owing to the greater extension of forests in ancient 

 times, and by an alteration of climate, has excavated the 

 present valley, and produced the strata above numerated ; 

 then " the suggestion of an antiquity for the human family so 

 remote as is here implied, in the length of ages required by 

 the gentle rivers and small streams of eastern France to erode 

 its whole plain to the depths at which they now flow, acquires, 

 it must be confessed, a fascinating grandeur, when by simili- 

 tude of feature and geology, we extend the hypothesis to the 

 whole north-west frontiers of the continent, and assume that, 

 from the estuary of the Seine to the eastern shores of the 

 Baltic, every internal feature of valley, dale and ravine in 

 short, the entire intaglio of the surface has been moulded 

 by running waters, since the advent of the human race."* 



But, on the other hand, it has been maintained that the 

 pliant facts may be read as " expressions of violent and sudden 

 mutations, only compatible with altogether briefer periods." 

 The argument of the Paroxysmist would probably be some- 

 thing like the following : 



" Assuming the pre-existing relief, or excavation rather, of 

 the surface to have approximated to that now prevailing, he 

 will account for the gravel by supposing a sudden rocking 

 movement of the lands and the bottom of the sea of the nature 

 of an earthquake, or a succession of them, to have launched a 

 portion of the temporarily uplifted waters upon the surface 

 of the land." 



Let us, however, examine the strata, and see whether the 

 evidence they give is in reality so confused and contradictory. 



Taking the section at St. Acheul and commencing at the 

 bottom, we have first of all the partially rounded high-level 

 gravel, throughout which, and especially at the lower part, 

 the flint implements occur. 



These beds but rarely contain vegetable remains. Large 

 * Black wood's Magazine, October, 1860. 



