GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY. 241 



British Isles, yet they have not amounted to catastrophes so general 

 as to affect the regular succession of organized beings. 



Lastly, M. Lartet announced that a flint hatchet and some flint 

 knives had lately been discovered in company with remains of Ele- 

 phant, Aurochs, Horse, and a feline animal, in the sands of the 

 Parisian suburb of Grenelle, by M. Gosse, of Geneva. 



FLINTS IN THE DRIFT. 



AMONG the more striking communications of the past year upon 

 this much-vexed question are the following : — 



First is a letter from Professor Henslow, from Hitcham, in Suffolk. 

 The writer having visited the celebrated gravel-pits at Abbeville 

 and Amiens, details the evidence collected during his visit, and the 

 inferences therefrom ; and in a second letter remarks having alluded 

 to an opinion which has been promulgated, that the hatchets found 

 in undisturbed gravels were of pre-Adamite origin, adding: — " M. 

 ■ de Perthes, the first observer of those which occur in the Valley 

 of the Somme, considers them antediluvian. But geologists do not 

 recognise this term in its vulgar acceptation. Many so-called dilu- 

 vial gravels, in different districts, have been shown to be not contem- 

 poraneous in their formation. The terms pre-Adamite and antedi- 

 luvial are scientifically objectionable. Unquestionable as are the 

 ■merits of M. de Perthes in having got together a vast mass of evi- 

 dence in proof of these hatchets being found in undisturbed gravel, 

 no geologist can allow a considerable number of the flint objects 

 he has obtained from the same beds to be the antediluvian relics 

 which lie regards them. They are mere 'lusus natures,'' common 

 ■in flint. Certainly, a great and unexpected difficulty has been started 

 by the occurrence of these hatchets in undisturbed gravels hitherto 

 referred to a period prior to that in which we have supposed man 

 to have been placed upon the earth. Is this difficulty to be re- 

 moved by extending our received chronologies ? or by concluding 

 that certain extinct animals were coeval with man within the his- 

 toric period ? or may we conclude the hatchet-bearing gravels to 

 have been formed within that period, but the extinction of the 

 mammals to have occurred prior to that period, even though we 

 find their remains in juxtaposition with the undoubted works of 

 man ? The hatchets must have been entangled in the gravel, and 

 the general configuration of the surface-soil must have been ar- 

 ranged before, perhaps long before, the Romans dug their graves 

 at St.- Ache ul. Suppose these graves to have been dug 1500 years 

 ago, would another 1500 or 2000 years have sufficed for obliterating 

 the superficial effects which a transient cataclysm may have pro- 

 duced along the Valley of the Somme ? How imperceptibly gradual 

 the rise of an extensive district might be, and yet effect an ele- 

 vation of several feet in two or three thousand years. A very 

 slight depression now would cause the tide to flow considerably 

 higher up the Valley of the Somme, and salt-water and fresh- 

 water shells would be again mingled as they are said to have 

 been found about Abbeville in the old deposits. Whenever these 



Q 



