ETHNOLOGY AND ANTHKOPOLOGT. 



379 



ing to discuss with M. de Beaumont the strati- 

 graphical question, which he considered not in 

 his province, persisted in regarding it as very 

 probable that the jaw from Moulin-Quignon is 

 contemporaneous with the other bones, fossil, 

 obtained from the same quarry. And M. J. 

 Nickles, in his note on the subject to the 

 "American Journal of Science," speaking of 

 course for "Western Europe, declares that, 

 though the point is still in discussion, the 

 opinion just stated is shared by geologists and 

 palaeontologists in general. 



Certain other speculations in reference to 

 the age of- the deposits of the Somme valley, 

 will now be briefly indicated. 



Successive Eras of Deposit. M. Delanoue stat- 

 ed before the Anthropological Society of Paris, 

 his belief that he had shown by the geological 

 constitution of the bed of the Somme valley, 

 that after the first diluvial epoch which (up 

 to this point) would appear to give us the first 

 date of humanity the geological conditions 

 determining the superincumbent deposits had 

 changed tiot less than four times ; and the du- 

 ration implied in these four successive periods 

 he regarded as truly incalculable. 



Supposition of Recent Date of the Somme De- 

 posits. Prof. Phillips, before the British Asso- 

 ciation, 1863, urged that the existence of the 

 flint implements in the same deposits with 

 bones of extinct animals in the valley of the 

 Somme, might be accounted for upon the sup- 

 position that a river there had changed its po- 

 sition ; so that the implements found near the 

 bottom of the deposits might formerly have 

 existed near the top. But a more probable 

 hypothesis, in his view, was that there had 

 been an elevation affecting the valley of the 

 Somme. The geography of France, with riv- 

 ers running in parallel lines across the chalk, 

 he thought favored such a result. 



Alluvial Accumulation in tlie Valleys of the 

 Somme and Ouse. At the time of the discus- 

 sion before the British Association, upon a hu- 

 man cranium from Amiens, and which resem- 

 bled the Engis skull, Mr. K. A. Godwin-Austen 

 remarked that in his opinion the discoveries of 

 Amiens had no bearing on the question of the 

 antiquity of man, because he believed that the 

 whole locality had been a burying place for an 

 enormous period of time. He had visited the 

 locality from which the famous jaw was taken ; 

 and he believed that the deposit there was 

 nothing but an accumulation of drift from the 

 chalk hills which overhung that particular spot. 



The same author on a later occasion read 

 before the Association a paper having the title 

 of the heading above. The object of this pa- 

 per was to show that the two river-valleys 

 named belonged to areas over which the geo- 

 logical changes had been so different, that no 

 comparisons of them could properly be made. 

 He argued that the materials of the gravel- 

 beds of the Ouse had, like those of all the riv- 

 ers of the east of England, been derived from 

 the " boulder formation ; " and that the state 



of the animal remains on the Ouse indicated 

 that they belonged to the fauna of the period 

 antecedent to the boulder clay ; and conse- 

 quently, that, should flint implements be met 

 with in the Bedford gravel beds (those of the 

 Ouse), the fact would not prove that the Elephas 

 primigenius and the associated species were 

 contemporary with man. 



After the reading of the above papers, Mr. 

 Lyell said that he had expected to hear a 

 greater divergence from his own conclusions, 

 from Messrs. Phillips and Austen, than had 

 appeared. An elevation of the region of the 

 Somme valley would of course make the time 

 since the deposit of the gravel beds there, 

 shorter ; but could the fact of such an eleva- 

 tion be shown? As to Mr. Austen's conclusion 

 of an older gravel in the region of the Ouse, 

 he must show that such older formation was 

 really under the drift of the country. But 

 such was not the case ; and the hypothesis ap- 

 peared to him a violent one to get rid of a vio- 

 lent conclusion. T. 



Supposed Evidences of Man in Pliocene Stra- 

 ta. Mr. C. C. Blake read before the London 

 Anthrop. Society, July 7th, 1863. a paper de- 

 voted chiefly to an account and discussion of 

 the discoveries then recently made by M. Des- 

 noyers, at St. Prest, France, and a statement 

 of which the latter had just communicated to 

 the French Academy. The new evidences of 

 extreme antiquity of the human race, chiefly 

 such as afforded by the rejected debris of hu- 

 man food, would appear to indicate the exist- 

 ence of man at a far more distant point of 

 geological time than any previously made out 

 in fact, at a time preceding the great first 

 glacial period. 



The author of the paper desired, as a pre- 

 paration for the understanding of the subject, 

 to define, generally, the horizons or zones of 

 geological distribution of a few of the extinct 

 pachyderms. There are three principal species 

 of European fossil elephant known : the Ele- 

 phas primigenius (mammoth) ; E. antiquus, and 

 E. meridionalis. The E.j^rimigeniusli^ been 

 discovered in post-pliocene gravels in northern 

 Europe, and in the cave deposit^. It had sur- 

 vived through the period of the glacial drift. 

 The oldest known examples are those from the 

 forest-bed of Norfolk. The E. antiquus had 

 been found in the pliocene gravel of the 

 Thames valley ; in the caves of Kirkdale and 

 Kent's Hole; in the Norfolk forest-beds, and 

 St. Acheul gravels. The E. meridionalis had 

 been found in the Norfolk forest-beds ; in the 

 Norwich crag ; in the deposits of the Val 

 d'Arno ; and at St. Prest, near Chartres. 



Several species of rhinoceros, also, are charac- 

 teristic of the later tertiary beds. Former palae- 

 ontologists distinguished two the E. tichorM- 

 nus and the R. leptorMnus. But Mr. Falconer's 

 researches have led him to divide the latter 

 into three species : 1, the Rhin-megarhinus, 

 found in gravels at Gray's Thurrock, and other 

 localities ; 2, the R. hemitcechus, accompanying 





