86 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



These details may be dry enough to our readers, but they are of prime 

 importance in relation with the question whether man originated 

 before the Quaternary, either in France, or, as is perhaps more probable, 

 migrated there from some Asiatic or African region in company with 

 the hippopotamus, rhinoceros and other tropical forms which were his 

 contemporaries. 



Here might be mentioned the equivalent beds exposed in the sand- 

 pits at Montreuil, which is nearer Paris, and just north of Vincennes. 

 As stated by Ameghino, the deposits at this place are the same as at 

 Chelles. The lowest beds are gray sands, without boulders, and rich 

 in mammalian bones. Above lies a bed of large rounded pebbles, but 

 it is sterile, or destitute of any but mere fragments ; directly above is 

 a bed of sand, this being capped by the red drift with boulders. The 

 lowest beds present the same traces of denudation and of ancient 

 erosion as observed in the corresponding beds at Chelles. No Chellean 

 axes have been found at this quarry, at least the workmen were 

 unacquainted with them, but Ameghino himself found in the lowest 

 or preglacial bed two flint flakes, with a very pronounced bulb of per- 

 cussion ('concoide') which prove the former presence of man. 



In the third bed (B), i. e., that lying beneath, occur the true 

 Moustierian implements which are entirely different in shape from the 

 Chellean axe, being broadly triangular or pointed in outline, and only 

 worked on one face, being flat on one side and convex on the other. In 

 this interglacial bed occur the bones and teeth of the mammoth 

 (Elephas primigenius) and this is the age of the cave-dwellers of the 

 Spy or Neanderthal race, the age of the mammoth, of the Rhinoceros 

 tichorhinus, the reindeer, musk ox, etc. With the Moustierian points 

 occur flint knives, and also two new forms, the skin-scraper (racloir) 

 and lance points. We see here traces of the immigration of subarctic 

 mammals, showing that the climate was cooler than in the Chellean 

 epoch, while the human race had either become modified, or had 

 migrated hither from elsewhere, though these peculiar broad points 

 do not, so far as we know, exist beyond the limits of France. 



The same sequence is shown in the lowest beds at St. Acheul, near 

 Amiens. The basal deposits, rich in Chellean almond-shaped imple- 

 ments contain at or below the depth of seven meters the remains of 

 Elephas anliquus; at or below five meters Hippopotamus amphibius, 

 while in the higher beds the straight-tusked elephant is succeeded by 

 the mammoth, whose remains do not occur below the depth of three 

 meters (0 shorn). 



Ameghino calls attention to a circumstance worthy of mention. As 

 we have seen, flint axes of excellent workmanship occur in con- 

 siderable numbers at the base of the lowest Quaternary beds lying 

 directly upon the eroded surface of the Eocene Tertiary greenish marls. 



