94 POST-PLIOCENE ALLUVIUM OF THE SOMME. CHAP. vi. 



of the antiquity of our race to the dark recesses of under 

 ground vaults and tunnels, which may have served as places 

 of refuge or sepulture to a succession of human beings and 

 wild animals, and where floods may have confounded to 

 gether in one breccia the memorials of the fauna of more 

 than one epoch ? Why do we not meet with a similar as 

 semblage of the relics of man, and of living and extinct 

 quadrupeds, in places where the strata can be thoroughly 

 scrutinised in the light of day ? 



Recent researches have at length demonstrated that such 

 memorials, so long sought for in vain, do in fact exist, and 

 their recognition is the chief cause of the more favourable 

 reception now given to the conclusions which MM. Tournal, 

 Christol, Schmerling, and others, arrived at thirty years ago 

 respecting the fossil contents of caverns. 



The first great step in this new direction was made 

 thirteen years after the publication of Schmerling's ( Re 

 searches,' by M. Boucher de Perthes, who found in ancient 

 alluvium at Abbeville, in Picardy, some flint implements, 

 the relative antiquity of which was attested by their geologi 

 cal position. The antiquarian knowledge of their discoverer 

 enabled him to recognise in their rude and peculiar type a 

 character distinct from that of the polished stone weapons 

 of a later period, usually called * celts.' In the first 

 volume of his f Antiquites Celtiques,' published in 1847, 

 M. Boucher de Perthes styled these older tools ( antedilu 

 vian,' because they came from the lowest beds of a series of 

 ancient alluvial strata bordering the valley of the Somme, 

 which geologists had termed ' diluvium.' He had begun to 

 collect these implements in 1841, from which time they had 

 been dug out of the drift or deposits of gravel and sand 

 whenever excavations were made in repairing the fortifica 

 tions of Abbeville ; or annually, as often as flints were wanted 

 for the roads, or loam for making bricks. Fine sections, 



