388 COLUMBIAN HISTORICAL EXPOSITION AT MADRID. 



body Museum at Cambridge, Massachusetts), iior indeed does the more 

 highly specialized leaf-shaped form (see form fr, fig. 17) from Europe, 

 which may be said to exactly duplicate many of the thicker and heavier 

 cache specimens from the United States appear in the Trenton set. But 

 the less specialized form A, common at St. Acheul, Abbeville, Chelles, 

 Thetford, San Isidro, etc., is a fair enough counterpart of the Trenton 

 relics. 



On examining the Quaternary relic-bearing gravel pits in, France, 

 England, and Spain the American student learns that a very small 

 percentage of the specimens in the public and private collections have 

 been found by scientific observers in place, nearly all having been 

 bought from workmen; that many &quot; axes,&quot; or &quot;coups de poing,&quot; as 

 Boucher de Perthes called them, exactly like those from the gravels, 

 have been found lying on the surface, mixed with Neolithic remains, 

 and that these, owing to their form, have been classed as &quot; Paleoliths&quot; 

 in the museums. 



Still it would be hard indeed to leave the classic sites on the Somme 

 after a careful examination unconvinced that the chipped forms (fig. 17) 

 are really found in situ in all parts of the gravels continually asso 

 ciated with bones of the Elephas antiquus and primogenius, Hippo 

 potamus major, Ehinoceros merkii and tichorinus, Equus caballus, 

 cave bear, hyena, and reindeer. 1 



The surface about the quarries at Abbeville is a series of open meadows, edged 

 by a parade ground and several vegetable gardens, where fossils could no more rest 

 undisturbed on the surface than they could upon Boston Common. A gravel digger 

 at work at the Champs de Mars quarry sold me several specimens of a badly decayed 

 elephant s tooth. Another at the Chemin de Poste quarry, several patinated 

 &quot;haches&quot; of fig. 16 a type. At St. Acheul another had a box full of chips, fossils, 

 and broken &quot;axes,&quot; well patinated, while at Chelles the table in the foreman s shed 

 was piled with flint specimens, together with elephant, rhinoceros, and reindeer 

 fossils. 



There are many important differences to be observed between the conditions of 

 the French River gravels and those at Trenton. 



(1) All the French implements are of flint, while nearly all the Trenton ones are of 

 argillite. Nearly every pebble or nodule in the French deposits was of flint, avail 

 able for chipping, while in the Trenton Gravels argillite pebbles are not common. 



(2) Fortunately for the European student the French gravels, largely composed 

 of chalky material, adapted to the preservation of bones, are we]l scattered with 

 the fossil remains of Quaternary mammals, which alone serve to define the geological 

 age of the stratum, Avhile from the Trenton Gravels the discovery of only one Mam 

 moth s tusk, by Professor Haynes, and two human skulls (unfortunately not 

 described by Dr. Virchow in his Crania) and a unio shell by Dr. Abbott have been 

 noted. The French gravels, however, have yielded no human bones the famous 

 Moulin Quignon jawbone discovered by Boucher de Perthes having been derived 

 from a Neolithic interment. 



(3) M. du Mesuil, of Abbeville, says he has found many hammer stones and several 

 flakes at Abbeville in situ, but none have been alleged to have been discovered at 

 Trenton. 



(4) We learn, moreover, that the French gravels had nothing to do with the 

 European Glacial period, while those at Trenton are believed to have been laid 

 down by freshets caused by the melting of American glaciers. 



