4 Darbishike, Implements from the Kentish Plateau. 



from his own long-continued and very great collections, 

 the fact of his discovery. Unfortunately, M. de Perthes 

 mixed up with his identification of manufactured tools 

 many conjectures as to the nature and use of other stones 

 which had occurred to his hand, and in which he 

 imagined he could trace figures or idols or other objects 

 of undoubtedly purely fanciful conception. 



The whole idea was so extraordinarily novel to even 

 cultivated geologists of that day, and was so confused 

 with other matter of the kind referred to, that his dis- 

 coveries were ridiculed and scouted in France and 

 elsewhere, and for many years the discoverer had no 

 defender except Dr. Rigollot of Amiens, who, having 

 first scoffed, prosecuted his researches in alliance with his 

 friend, and eventually became his most pertinacious ally. 



Still, partly from want of sufficient free intercourse 

 between the scientific men of the two countries, whatever 

 intelligence of these alleged discoveries had passed into 

 England was entirely disregarded until, in November 

 1858, Dr. Hugh Falconer (already amply trained in 

 observation of recent deposits, and especially in the study 

 of the latest races of animals before those of the present 

 epoch), while travelling from England to the South, 

 introduced himself to M. de Perthes and examined his 

 collections, and was satisfied of their proof of an indubitable 

 co-existence of man and the animals of the su})erficial 

 deposits of the so-called quaternary sands and gravels. 

 Convinced of the reality of the discovery, he reported 

 it in a letter to Mr. Prestwich, who had already acquired 

 the reputation of being one of the ablest of geological 

 observers of his time, and especially unrivalled in his 

 knowledge of these latest sands and gravels. As an 

 immediate consequence of this communication, in April, 

 1859, Mr. Prestwich visited Abbeville, and inspected the 



