CHAP. vi. INVESTIGATIONS MADE AT ABBEVILLE AND AMIENS. 103 



succeeded in dissipating all doubts from the minds of his geo 

 logical friends by extracting, with his own hands, from a bed of 

 undisturbed gravel, at St. Acheul, a well-shaped flint hatchet. 

 This implement was buried in the gravel at a depth of seven 

 teen feet from the surface, and was lying on its flat side. 

 There were no signs of vertical rents in the enveloping matrix, 

 nor in the overlying beds of sand and loam, in which were many 

 land and fresh-water shells ; so that it was impossible, to ima 

 gine that the tool had gradually worked its way downwards, 

 as some had suggested, through the incumbent soil, into an 

 older formation.* 



There was no one in England whose authority deserved to 

 have more weight in overcoming incredulity in regard to 

 the antiquity of the implements in question than that of 

 Mr. Prestwich, since, besides having published a series of 

 important memoirs on the tertiary formations of Europe, he 

 had devoted many years specially to the study of the drift 

 and its organic remains. His report, therefore, to the Eoyal 

 Society, accompanied by a photograph showing the position 

 of the flint tool in situ before it was removed from its 

 matrix, not only satisfied many inquirers, but induced others 

 to visit Abbeville and Amiens ; and one of these, Mr. Flower, 

 who accompanied Mr. Prestwich on his second excursion to 

 St. Acheul, in June 1859, succeeded, by digging into the 

 bank of gravel, in disinterring, at the depth of twenty-two 

 feet from the surface, a fine, symmetrically shaped weapon 

 of an oval form, tying in and beneath strata which were ob 

 served by many witnesses to be perfectly undisturbed.f 



Shortly afterwards, in the year 1859, I visited the same 

 pits, and obtained seventy flint tools, one of which was taken 

 out while I was present, though I did not see it before it had 



* Prestwich, Proceedings of the f Geological Quarterly Journal, 



Royal Society, 1859, and Philoso- vol. xvi. p. 190. 

 phical Transactions, 1860. 



