413 



the close similitude of the specimens selected from my cabinet^ and 

 laid before the Society, with the figures of "Prominent forms of 

 flint implements found in the Valley of the Somme/' at Amiens 

 and Abbeville, described in the proceedings of the Literary and 

 Philosophical Society of Liverpool, in a communication by Henry 

 Duckworth, F. E. G. S., &c. They are so much ahke, that they may 

 almost be viewed as the identical specimens from which the artist 

 made his designs. 



There is no reason to mistrust the authenticity of the source from 

 whence the figured specimens were derived, and that they were the 

 works of man's hand, no one at all conversant with the subject can 

 for a moment doubt; the general form and conchoidal fracture leave 

 no room for error; and the presence of bones of the extinct animals 

 associated with them in undisturbed diluvium, and in bone caves, is 

 well established. 



The conclusions from these accepted facts of association of the 

 bones of the elephant, rhinoceros, cave bear, hyena, and other 

 extinct animals, with flint knives, arrow-heads, and other " worked 

 flints,'' of man's making, do not involve any necessity of an earlier 

 or more remote origin of our race, than is usually received as ortho- 

 dox, but evidently brings the existence of these animals down to a 

 later and contemporaneous period. 



M. Boucher de Perthes, is unquestionably the pioneer in this 

 research ; but he is an enthusiast in his science, and some of the 

 figures in his first volume, if faithful, will require a like tempera- 

 ment to see, as he saw; or more correctly, perhaps, be it said, as his 

 engraver desires the observer to see. 



The forms of the specimens submitted to the inspection of the 

 Society are well-nigh identical, as are those of various other speci- 

 mens from my cabinet, with those from Amiens and Abbeville. 



We do not know with certainty what the material of the French 

 and English specimens is, but have reason to believe that they were 

 made of flint, as the prevalence of that mineral and the proximity 

 of chalk account alike for its origin and abundance. They are 

 undoubtedly, like those of this country, composed of a silicious 

 base. Ours, likewise, are of horn-stone, jasper, &c., and all the 

 varieties of transition from simple sandstone to pure chalcedony : 

 But here all similitude ceases ; these are taken from the surface of 

 the earth, emphatically from the soil, or turned up by the plough, 

 which had, on some former furrow-trod path, turned them under it; 

 or they were found on the borders of our rivers, the caving banks of 



