EARLIEST EVIDENCES OF MAN IN FRANCE. 87 



So well are these implements made that we are forced to believe that 

 this industry extended back to a still earlier period than the age of 

 the beds in which these axes occur, and as he says, this fact 'consti- 

 tutes for me the most weighty arguments that we can invoke in favor 

 of the existence of man during the end of the Tertiary period.' Exhibit- 

 ing to the members of the Anthropological Society the flints and teeth 

 he had found, he showed that their edges were not water-worn, and that 

 the flint axes had been abandoned by men where they were found. 

 '"'Man, then, lived on the spot, and the instruments, at least in part, 

 have also been worked out on the same ground. What proves this is 

 that the little nuclei, like the two I exhibit, were found in the same 

 bed. The teeth and bones of the mammals present no trace of having 

 been water-worn. On the other hand, as the mammalian remains and 

 the evidences of human workmanship are found at all the horizons of 

 this lower bed, we are obliged to conclude that man inhabited this 

 region almost continuously, or at least with very brief interruptions."* 



Remains of man have been discovered in Kent County, England, 

 and in Dorset in the high-level gravels, which are certainly preglacial, as 

 they contain remains of Elephas meridionalis in beds regarded by 

 Lyell as 'a patch of Pliocene gravel.' These beds were afterwards 

 referred by Prestwich to the early Pleistocene. As Prestwich states, 

 the base-line between the Pliocene and the lowest Pleistocene is some- 

 what arbitrary, and the two periods in England gradually merged into 

 each other. 



These beds were afterwards referred by Prestwich, certainly the 

 best authority then living, to the early Pleistocene. As he claimed, the 

 base line between the Pliocene and the lowest Pleistocene is somewhat 

 indefinite, and the two periods in England gradually merged into each 

 other. The beds in question, namely those in Kent and Dorset counties, 

 England, were regarded by Prestwich as the English equivalent of the 

 St. Prest (Eure et Loire) beds, situated about fifty miles southwest 

 of Paris, and also of the so-called Pliocene beds of the Val d'Arno in 

 Italy. These beds, as well as those at other places in France, i. e., 

 Durfort in Gard, and Malbattu and Peyrolles in the Auvergne (Puy- 

 de-Dome), which also contain remains of Elephas meridionalis, are now 

 regarded as 'transitional between Pliocene and Pleistocene with pre- 

 vailing affinities on the latter side.f The climate of this transitional 

 preglacial epoch, when the plateau man of Southern England chased 

 the tropical or meridional elephant, and other beasts, such as tigers, 

 hyaenas, rhinoceros and the hippopotamus, a mixed assemblage of 



* ' Sur le gisement de Chelles,' Bulletins de la Socie'te' d' Anthropologic (3), 

 iv., 1881, pp. 96-101. 



f H. F. Osborn, ' Correlation between Tertiary Mammal Horizons of Europe 

 and America,' Annals New York Academy of Sciences, xiii., 1900, pp. 1-72. 



