204 ORIGINAL AETICLES. 



" les traces du moyen-age. Cinquaute centimetres plus bas, ou 

 " commence a trouver des debris remains, puis gaUo-romains. Ou 

 " continue a suivre ces dernicrs pendant un metre, c'est a dire 

 "jusqu'au niveau de la Somme. Apres eux, Adennent les A^estiges 

 " gaulois purs qui descendent sans interruption jusqu'a pres de 

 " 2 metres audessous de ce niveau, preuve de la tongue habitation 

 " de ces peuples dans la vallee. C'est a un metre plus bas, ou a 4 

 " metres environ audessous de ce meme niveau, qu'on arrive au 

 " centre du sol que nous avons nomme Celtique, celui qui fbulerent 

 " les Gaulois primitives ou les peuples qui les precederent ;" and 

 which belonged therefore to the ordinary stone period. It is, how- 

 ever, hardly necessary to add that these thicknesses are only given by 

 M. I3oucher de Perthes " comme terme appro ximatif." 



The " Antiquites Celtiques " was published several years before 

 the Swiss Archaeologists had made us acquainted wath the nature of 

 the Pfahlbauten ; but, from some indications given by M. Boucher de 

 Perthes, it would appear that there must have been, at one time, 

 lake-habitations in the neighboui"hood of Abbeville. He found con- 

 siderable platforms of wood, with large quantities of bones, stone 

 implements, and handles closely resembling those which come from 

 the Swiss lakes. 



These weapons cannot for an instant be confounded with the 

 ruder ones from the drift gravel. They are ground to a smooth 

 surface and a cutting edge, while the more ancient ones are merely 

 chipped, not one of the many hundreds already found having shown 

 the slightest trace of grinding. Yet though the former belong to the 

 stone age, to a time so remote that the use of metal was apparently still 

 imknown in Western Europe, they are separated from the earlier 

 weapons of the upper level drift by the whole period necessary for 

 the excavation of the Somme Valley, to a depth of moi'e than 100 

 feet. 



If, thei'efore, we get no definite date for the arrival of man in 

 these countries, we can at least form a vivid idea of his antiquity. 

 He must have seen the Somme rumiing at a height of, in round 

 numbers, a h\indred and fifty feet above its present level. From 

 finding the hatchets in the gravel up to a level of a hundred feet, it 

 is probable that he dates back in Northern France almost, if not 

 quite, as long as the rivers themselves. The face of the country must 

 have been indeed unlike what it is now. Along the banks of the 

 rivers ranged a savage race of hvmters and fishermen, and in the 

 forests wandered the mammoth, the two-horned, woolly, rhinoceros, 

 a species of tiger, the musk ox, the reindeer, and the urus. 



Yet the geography of France cannot have been verj difierent 

 from what it is at present. The present rivers ran in their present 

 directions, and the -sea even then lay between the Somme and the 

 Adur, though the channel was not so wide as it is at present. 



Gi'adually the river deepened its valley ; inetfective, or even per- 

 haps constructive, in autumn and winter, the melting of the snows 



