GEOLOGY. 289 



and on the llth of May, the party of exploration being increased, 

 they turned out from a depth of about 14 feet, a human jaw-bone, 

 nearly perfect with other bones and some cut flints. On the 7th of 

 June, the Abbe Martin, Professor of Geology at the Seminary of St. 

 lliquier, continued the diggings and took out from a drift bed, at a place 

 which showed plainly by its regular stratification, that it had not been 

 disturbed since its original deposition, a human cranium, the frontal 

 bone, and the parietal of which were nearly entire, and also two frag- 

 ments of an upper jaw. 



The number of specimens of bones thus collected from the Abbe- 

 ville beds during the past year amounts to 200, and they were all 

 found within an extent of about 130 feet. Part of these are of animals. 

 The human remains, apparently indicate a very small race of men. 



Discovery of an Ancient Factory of Flint Implement*. During 

 the past year there has been discovered near Pressigny, in the Depart- 

 ment of Indre-et-Loire, in France, an ancient manufacturing place of 

 ilint implements, exceeding in interest and importance any thing of the 

 kind before known. In a letter read to the French Academy by the 

 Abbe Chevalier, detailing this discovery, the writer says : 



All the flint implements lie in vast quantities on the very surface of 

 the ground ; there is no walking a step without treading upon one of 

 them. They consist of cut nuclei, tomahawks, hatchets, knives from 

 five to six inches in length, spear heads, scrapers, and vast quantities 

 of chips of silicious stones. They are so numerous that ploughmen, 

 when they find them lying in front of the ploughshare, pick them up 

 and throw them in heaps on the borders of the field. The ground 

 has an extent of about 15 acres, and the Abbe considers the discoveries 

 at Abbeville to be quite insignificant compared with these. A few of 

 the articles are polished. Dr. Leueille, the physician of the place, 

 has had the good fortune to find a hatchet-polisher consisting of a 

 block of sandstone about 18 inches by 12, with numerous furrows, into 

 which the hatchets used to be inserted for the purpose of sharpening 

 or polishing them by friction, after being previously hewn into shape. 



A writer in Galiynani, commenting on this discovery says : The 

 question involuntarily presents itself, how it is possible that such a 

 rich field of exploration should have remained unnoticed for so long 

 a period, and whether the very abundance of these flint implements is 

 not sufficient to cast a doubt upon their antiquity. The fact of flint 

 implements having lain for thousands of years on the surface of a 

 field, without being either noticed or picked up, or washed away or 

 buried by the action of violent rains, is certainly much more wonder- 

 ful, not to say improbable, than any of the late singular discoveries 

 made in caverns or at certain depths below the surface of the soil. 



Discovery of Fossil Stone Implements in India. At a recent meet- 

 ing of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, Prof. Oldham exhibited 

 a small collection of stone implements which had very recently been 

 discovered by Messrs. King and Foote, of the Geological Survey of 

 India, near Madras. These were all of the ruder forms, so well 

 known as characterizing the Hint implements which have excited so 

 much attention within the last few years in Europe. They were all 

 formed of dense semivitreous quartzite, a rock which occurred in 

 immense abundance in districts close to where these implements had 

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