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 imj:)lement was buried in the gravel at a depth of seven- 

 teen feet from the sui'face, and was lying on its flat side. 

 There were no signs of vei'tical rents in the enveloping matrix, 

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

 many land and fresh- water shells j so that it w^as impossible 

 to imagine that the tool had gradually worked its way down- 

 wards, as soiue 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 man}' 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, sj^mmetrically shaped weapon 

 of an oval form, lying 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, oneof Avhich was taken 

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



» Prestwich, Proceedings of tlie f Geological Quarterly Journal, vol. 



Rojal Society, 1859, and Philosophi- xvi. p. 190. 

 cal Transactions, 1860. 



