CHAP. vn. GLOBULAR SPONGES ARTIFICIALLY PERFORATED. 119 



Somme, would himself be able to detect a single specimen. 

 But few tools were lying on the surface. The rest have been 

 exposed to view by the removal of such a volume of sand, 

 clay, and gravel, that the price of the discovery of one of 

 them could only be estimated by knowing how many hundred 

 labourers have toiled at the fortifications of Abbeville, or in 

 the sand and gravel pits near that city, and around Amiens, 

 for road materials and other economical purposes, during the 

 last twenty years. 



In the gravel pits of St. Acheul, and in some others near 

 Amiens, small round bodies, having a tubular cavity in the 

 centre, occur. They are well known as fossils of the white 

 chalk. Dr. Eigollot suggested that they might have been 



a, b Coscinopora globularis If Orb. Orbitolina concava Parker and Jones, 

 c Part of the same magnified. 



strung together as beads, and he supposed the hole in the 

 middle to have been artificial. Some of these round bodies 

 are found entire in the chalk and in the gravel, others have 

 naturally a hole passing through them, and sometimes one 

 or two holes penetrating some way in from the surface, 

 but not extending to the other side. Others, like 6, fig. 15, 

 have a large cavity, which has a very artificial aspect. 

 It is impossible to decide whether they have or have not 

 served as personal ornaments, recommended by their globular 

 form, lightness, and by being less destructible than ordinary 

 chalk. Granting that there were natural cavities in the axis of 

 some of them, it does not follow that these may not have been 

 taken advantage of for stringing them as beads, while others 

 may have been artificially bored through. Dr. Rigollot's 



