CHAP. xi. CORRESPONDING MAMMALIAN FAUNA. 199 



more wasted and denuded state than Denise, and classed by 

 M. Bertrand de Doue as of intermediate age between the 

 ancient and modern cones of Velay. 



The fauna to which Elephas meridionalis and its associates 

 belong, can be shown to be of anterior date, in the north of 

 France, to the flint implements of St. Acheul, by the follow 

 ing train of reasoning. The Valley of the Seine is not only 

 geographically contiguous to the Valley of the Somme, but its 

 ancient alluvium contains the same mammoth and other 

 fossil species. The Eure, one of the tributaries of the Seine, 

 in its way to join that river, flows in a valley which follows 

 a line of fault in the chalk ; and this valley is seen to be 

 comparatively modern, because it intersects at St. Prest, four 

 miles below Chartres, an older valley belonging to an anterior 

 system of drainage, and which has been filled by a more 

 ancient fluviatile alluvium, consisting of sand and gravel, 

 ninety feet thick. I have examined the site of this older drift, 

 and the fossils have been determined by Dr. Falconer. They 

 comprise Elephas meridionalis, a species of rhinoceros (not 

 R. tichorhinus), and other mammalia differing from those 

 of the implement-bearing gravels of the Seine and Somme. 

 The latter, belonging to the period of the mammoth, 

 might very well have been contemporary with the modern vol 

 canic eruptions of Central France ; and we may presume, even 

 without the aid of the Denise fossil, that man may have wit 

 nessed these. But the tuffs and gravels in which the Elephas 

 meridionalis are embedded were synchronous with an older 

 epoch of volcanic action, to which the cone of St. Anne, near 

 Le Puy, and many other mountains of M. Bertrand de Doue's 

 middle period belong, having cones and craters, which have 

 undergone much waste by aqueous erosion. We have as 

 yet no proof that man witnessed the origin of these hills of 

 lava and scoriae of the middle phase of volcanic action. 



Some surprise was expressed in 1856, by several of the 



