198 Flint Drift and Human Remainsi 



the same peculiar forms of incision by using one of the old flint 

 implements found in the same beds of gravel, whilst he has equally- 

 found that similar marks are incapable of being produced by im- 

 plements of metallic edge. His conclusion is thus stated by him- 

 self: — " If, therefore, the presence of worked flints in the diluvial 

 banks of the Somme, lone since brought to light by M. Boucher 

 de Perthes, and more recently confirmed by the rigorous verifica- 

 tions of several of your learned fellow-countrymen, have estab- 

 lished the certainty of the existence of man at the time when those 

 erratic deposits were formed, the traces of an intentional operation 

 on the bones of the rhinoceros, the aurochs, the megaceros, the 

 cervus sommensis, &c. &c., supply equally the inductive demon- 

 stration of the contemporaneousness of those species with the 

 human race." 



The great number of flint implements which have been found 

 in the French beds — said to amount to upwards of a thousand in 

 a few years — when compared with their great rarity el &s where, 

 is not perhaps so curious as at first sight it may appear to be. 

 Flint implements can only be made where flints are accessible ; 

 and it is well known that the flints of particular beds, or strata of 

 the chalk, are more easily fashioned than others. It is therefore 

 probable that some such favourable localify had existed in the 

 chalk of that part of France, and that what may be called a 

 manufactory of them had been established there. It is remarka- 

 ble that some of the implements are only half finished, whilst all 

 of them exhibit such sharp edges and angles as are sufficient to 

 prove that they have not been transported far from the spot where 

 they were made, nor subjected to long wear from use. 



On the whole, then, it is not to be doubted that the discovery 

 of human implements under repeated beds of aqueous drift and 

 and sediment, so high above the levels of exising rivers, or of the 

 existing sea, is a fact of very great significance and importance. 

 In its bearing on geology, it is principally interesting as proving 

 at how recent a period portions at least of the earth have been 

 subject to powerful and rapid diluvial action. In its bearing oit 

 human chronology, everything depends on the degree of sudden- 

 ness and rapidity with which water may have been brought to act 

 upon the former surface. But here anything like data for positive 

 computation entirely fails us. We have no knowledge, in his- 

 toric times, of any aqueous operation on so grand a scale. Making 



