94 POST-PLIOCENE ALLUVIUM OP THE S0M3IE. chap. vi. 



of the antiquity of our race to the darlv recesses of under- 

 ground vaults and tunnel;?, Avhich 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 bi*eccia 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 

 quadruj^eds, in places where the stx-ata can be thoroughly 

 scrutinized in the light of day? 



Eeceut 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 favorable 

 rece2:)tion now given to the conclusions which MM. Tournal, 

 Christol, Schmerling, and others, arrived at thirty 3'ears ago 

 respecting the fossil contents of caverns. 



The first great step in this new direction Avas made 

 thirteen years after the publication of Schmcrling's " Ee- 

 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 b}^ their geologi- 

 cal position. The antiquarltm knowledge of their discoverer 

 enabled him to recognize 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 '• Antiquites C'oltiques," 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." lie 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. 



