X POST-PLEIOCENE FOSSILS. 



examination of the deposits at the quarry of St. Acheul, Mr. Flower discovered, and took up, witli his own hands, 

 at a depth of twenty feet, and at a foot from the surface of the gravel, a very fine axe, well cut, and in length 

 about twenty-five centimetres. It was from a ferruginous bed, above that of the white gravel, that I obtained 

 the other specimen. Above the gravel there was a bed of sand, containing fresh Avater and fragile land shells, 

 and then of brown clay, of gravel, and of brick clay. 



The whole was in good order, and nowise deranged. In fact it was very evident that it was a " terrain 

 vierge." 



This discovery removed every doubt of my friends, and I believe that now we are all of the same opinion, in 

 regard to the important truth of which you were the first to make the announcement, and which you have 

 sustained for the past ten years — and of which I am happy to be one of the witnesses. 



Accept sir, the assurance of my high regard. JOSEPH PRESTWICK. 



"The conclusions of these eminent gentlemen, members of societies so distinguished, the care that they have 

 taken to establish the character of the deposit and its primitive state, their profound research, their scrupulous 

 exactness which was carried so far as even to photograph the excavations, and the deposits in which the axes 

 were found, and to accept nothing as proof but that which they themselves discovered, and with their own 

 hands drew from the beds and diluvial deposits, should convince the most incredulous. 



To M. Boucher de Perthes then, belongs the honor of having first declared that though human bones were 

 not found, yet that the works of man contemporaneous with the deluge, ought to exist in the diluvial beds, and 

 of having, after numerous researches, demonstrated the truth of his theory. A truth which Dr. Eigollot, Cor- 

 responding member of the Institute, confirmed in 1854, in his brochure, "Des Instruments en Silex trouv^s a St. 

 Acheul, and which has just been again confirmed in a still more authentic manner by the .learned English 

 Geologists, whose names we have just mentioned; to which we must add that of the celebrated Palaeontologist, 

 Falconer, Vice President of the Geological Society of London, who, in 1858, visited Abbeville, and there exam- 

 ined with great care, the rich collection of M. Boucher de Perthes; and also that of Mr. John Evans, member of 

 the Geological and Antiquarian Societies of London, and another of several memoirs on Archaeology and Numis- 

 matology, in a letter from whom, addressed to our President, we read— "I was present at the sitting of the 

 Eoyal Society, when Ur. Prestwick read his report on the stone axes found in the diluvium, and I add my 

 testimony to his." After speaking of the axe that his colleague had just discovered in the diluvium, in Suffolk, 

 Mr. Evans, who had accompanied Mr. Prestwick in his first visit to Abbeville, and assisted him in his explora- 

 tions, says— 'I am satisfied these instruments of flint will be found in many other localities if the search for 

 them be properly conducted.' " 



LETTER FROM PROFESSOR AGASSIZ. 



Key West, Feb. 25th, 1858. 

 Prof. F. S. Holmes: 



My Dear Sie:— I have not forgotten my promise to write you my impressions respecting your important 

 discoveries of fossil mammalia in the Post-Pleiocene beds of South-Carolina. Indeed, I have been thinking of 

 them continually since I saw them, and nothing impressed me so deeply for many years past as the sight of 

 these bones. I consider their careful study in all their relations as of the utmost importance for the progress 

 of our science. It is true there is hardly anything of interest in the animals themselves, since they appear to be 

 all well known tjT^es, but their simultaneous occurrence in the same beds showing that they have lived 

 together at a time when the white man had not yet planted himself upon this continent, render their association 



