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 Yelay. 



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 com- 

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

 miles below Chartres, an older valley belonging to an ante- 

 rior system of drainage, and which has been tilled 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 beendetermined by Dr. Falconer. 

 They comprise Elephas meridionalis, a species of rhinoceros 

 (not jB. tichorhinus), and other mammalia diff'ei'ing 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 volcanic 

 eruptions of Central France; and we may presume, even with- 

 out the aid of the Denise fossil, that man may have witnessed 

 these. But the tuffs and gravels in which the Elephas meri- 

 dionalis are imbedded 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 lav^ 

 and scoriae of the middle phase of volcanic aetionv 



Some surpi'ise was expressed, in 1856, by several of the 



14 



