Occurrence of Flint-implements in Ch-avel-beds. 291 



tent to which these deposits are worked ; and of these few cases so 

 many have heen disproved, that man's non-existence on the earth 

 until after the latest geological changes, and the extinction of the 

 Mammoth, Tichorhine Rhinoceros, and other great mammals, had 

 come to be considered almost in the light of an established fact. 

 Instances, however, have from time to time occurred to throw some 

 doubt on this view, as the well-known cases of the human bones 

 found by Dr. Schmerling in a cavern near Liege, — the remains of 

 man, instanced by M. Marcel de Serres and others in several caverns 

 in France, — the flint-implements in Kent's Cave, — and many more. 

 Some uncertainty, however, has always attached to cave-evidence, 

 from the circumstance that man has often inhabited such places at 

 a comparatively late period, and may have disturbed the original 

 cave-deposit ; or, after the period of his residence, the stalagmitic 

 floor may have been broken up by natural causes, and the remains 

 above and below it may have thus become mixed together, and 

 afterwards sealed up by a second floor of stalagmite. Such instances 

 of an imbedded broken stalagmitic floor are in fact known to occur ; 

 at the same time the author does not pretend to say that this will 

 explain all cases of intermixture in caves, but that it lessens the value 

 of the evidence from such sources. 



The subject has, however, been latterly revived, and the evidence 

 more carefully sifted by Dr. Falconer ; and his preliminary reports 

 on the Brixham Cave*, presented last year to the Royal Society, 

 announcing the carefully determined occurrence of worked flints 

 mixed indiscriminately with the bones of the extinct Cave Bear and 

 the Rhinoceros, attracted great and general attention amongst geo- 

 logists. This remarkable discovery, and a letter written to him by 

 Dr. Falconer on the occasion of his subsequent visit to Abbeville 

 last autumn, instigated the author to turn his attention to other 

 ground, which, from the interest of its later geological phenomena 

 alone, as described by M. Buteux in his " Esquisse Ge'ologique du 

 Departement de la Somme," he had long wished and intended to 

 visit. 



In 1849 M. Boucher de Perthes, President of the "Soci^te 

 d'Emulation" of Abbeville, published the first volume of a work 

 entitled " Antiquites Celtiques et Antediluviennes," in which he an- 

 nounced the important discovery of worked flints in beds of undis- 

 turbed sand and gravel containing the remains of extinct mammalia. 

 Although treated from an antiquarian point of view, still the state- 

 ment of the geological facts by this gentleman, with good sections 

 by M. Ravin, is perfectly clear and consistent. Nevertheless, both 

 in France and in England, his conclusions were generally considered 

 erroneous ; nor has he since obtained such verification of the pheno- 

 mena as to cause so unexpected a fact to be accepted by men of 

 science. There have, however, been some few exceptions to tlie 

 general incredulity. The late Dr. RigoUot, of Amiens, urged by 



* On tlie 4th of May, this year, Dr. Falconer further coramunicated to the Geo- 

 logical Society soitie similar facts, though singularly varied, recently discovereil 

 hy bini in the Maccagnone Cave Jicar Palermo. — !;ee I'roc. d'eol. Soc. 



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