EARLIEST EVIDENCES OF MAN IN FRANCE. 85 



faces, showing a set of primary and secondary drippings or flakings. 

 Their edges are sharp, not water-worn, and, as Ameghino states, they 

 were evidently shaped by the early paleolithic workmen on the bed 

 where they occur. Probably several hundred of these axes have been 

 taken from these pits. Ameghino states that he possessed over a 

 hundred of them. 



With these axes sometimes occur long rude flakes ('lames'), knife- 

 like, sharp on one edge, struck off from the flint core by percussion. 

 No skin-scrapers (racloirs and grattoirs) or rude spear-points have 

 ever occurred in these beds. No human bones or teeth have ever 

 been found in these deposits, either here or at St. Acheul, and 

 apparently nowhere else, unless we except the human molars claimed 

 by Nehring to be of Chellean type. These are two very large molar teeth 

 resembling in some respects those of the chimpanzee and found in the 

 mid- Pleistocene drift of Taubach near Weimar. 



At all events man as man lived here, and what manner of beasts 

 were his contemporaries? They were in nearly every case representa- 

 tives of species now extinct. Bones and teeth of the straight- tusked 

 elephant (Elephas antiquus) and of the megarhine or big-nosed 

 rhinoceros, are not infrequent; we obtained fragments from the 

 workmen, and picked up some in the debris at the bottom of the 

 pit. 



The remains of other mammals are less common. Ameghino enumer- 

 ates besides those mentioned, the bones and teeth of the hippopotamus, 

 of a beaver -like rodent (Trogontherium, also found in the preglacial 

 beds of St. Prest, Durfort, etc.), of an ox, of a horse (perhaps Equus 

 sienonis), and an extinct deer different from the reindeer. This deer 

 is probably the same as Cervus oelgrandi found in beds of the same 

 age and nature at Montreuil, where its bones are associated with the 

 straight-tusked elephant (E. antiquus) and Rhinoceros merckii. 

 Ameghino also found at Chelles two canine teeth of the cave bear. As 

 to the numerous molars of the horse (we found two) Ameghino states 

 that they differ from those of the modern horse (Equus caballus) 

 frequently occurring in the later Quaternary and are allied to the 

 Tertiary species called Equus stenonis. Since the date when his paper 

 appeared Steno's horse has been referred to the lower Pleistocene, a 

 time of transition to the Pliocene Tertiary, and most probably, accord- 

 ing to Osborn, represented by the forest beds of Norfolk, England, and 

 the equivalent beds of St. Prest, Durfort, and other localities in 

 France. In fresh-water beds of this horizon occur also remains of the 

 cave-bear, cave-hyaena, saber-toothed tiger, musk ox, Hippopotamus, 

 Rhinoceros etruscus, Trogontherium cuvieri, of an otter, and of two 

 species of elephant, Elephas meridionalis, supposed to have been the 

 ancestor of the mammoth (E. primigenius) and Elephas antiquus. 



