CHAP. IX. EXTINCT MAMMALIA IN VALLEY OF THE OISE. 153 



Valley of the Oise. 



A flint hatchet, of the old Abbeville and Amiens type, was 

 found lately by M. Peigne Delacourt at Precy near Criel, on 

 the Oise, in gravel, resembling, in its geological position, the 

 lower-level gravels of Montiers near Arniens, already de 

 scribed. I visited these extensive gravel-pits in 1861, in 

 company with Mr. Prestwich; but we remained there too 

 short a time to entitle us to expect to find a flint implement, 

 even if they had been as abundant as at St. Acheul. 



In 1859, I examined, in a higher part of the same valley 

 of the Oise, near Chauny and Noyon, some fine railway 

 cuttings, which passed continuously through alluvium of the 

 post-pliocene period for half a mile. All this alluvium was 

 evidently of fluviatile origin, for, in the interstices between 

 the pebbles, the Ancylus fluviatilis and other freshwater 

 shells were abundant. My companion, the Abbe E. Lam 

 bert, had collected from the gravel a great many fossil bones, 

 among which M. Lartet has recognised both Elephas primi- 

 genius and E. antiquus, besides a species of hippopotamus 

 (H. major ?), also the rein-deer, horse, a.nd the musk buffalo 

 (Bubalus moschatus). The latter seems never to have been 

 seen before in the old alluvium of France.* Over the 

 gravel above mentioned, near Chauny, are seen dense masses 

 of loam like the loess of the Rhine, containing shells of the 

 genera Helix and Succinea. We may suppose that the gravel 

 containing the flint hatchet at Precy is of the same age as 

 that of Chauny, with which it is continuous, and that both of 

 them are coeval with the tool-bearing beds of Amiens, for the 

 basins of the Oise and the Somme are only separated by a 

 narrow water-shed, and the same fossil quadrupeds occur in 

 both. 



* Lartet, Annales des Sciences Naturelles Zoologiques, torn. xv. p. 224. 



