242 YEAR-BOOK OF FACT.-'. 



districts were (as all dry lands have been) at a lower level, banks 

 of gravel may have obstructed the flow of the river, and a swampy 

 lake district would have been the result. I am not aware whether 

 marine shells have been found intermingled with freshwater so 

 high up as Amiens." 



In a P.S. Professor Henslow adds: — -"In a communication just 

 received from M. de Perthes, he considers I may possibly have attri- 

 buted some of the apparent confusion at Moulins-Quignons, to the 

 intermixture of different ' samples' of gravel from old workings 

 which have been re-quarried ; it being difficult (he says) in some- 

 cases to distinguish between these and the undisturbed parts in 

 the pit. This remark, if just, cannot by any possibility be applied 

 to the pits at St.-Acheul, where the intermixtures on which 1 have 

 commented lie far below the Roman graves. J find 1 have been 

 misunderstood in regard to what I have inferred, from supposing 

 the partial or local confusion in these beds to have been due to- 

 some cataclysm like the bursting of a lake. I restricted such an 

 event ' to that place,' and had no intention of ascribing the g< 

 arrangement of the gravel to a Bingle debacle. These gravels occur 

 over extensive areas in France and England, and from such descrip- 

 tions as 1 have read, and from what 1 have myself seen of them, 

 they all appear to be lacustrine, fluviatile,' and partially estuary de- 

 posits. 1 object to their being regarded as any evidence of a ' uni- 

 versal deluge.' 1 am induced to repeat the suggestion I made last 

 year, when remarking on the Hoxlne gravel in connexion with that 

 at Stowmarket, viz., that these freshwater drifts may have 

 modified and partially re-arranged by a slight rise of the land 

 throughout the whole of northern Europe, and within the period 

 hitherto ascribed to the existence of man upon the earth .' If such 

 :i supposition will not meet the facts, and a different conclusion 

 l>< made palpable, we have only to be thankful that know] 

 will have been increased. It is impossible to ignore the Bible in 

 these investigations ; hut we have a right to expect that every link 

 in the chain of evidence forged to contro^rt its seeming testimony 

 should l»- most carefully scrutinized before its value as a holdfast 

 can be admitted. We have cast off old prejudices erroneously de- 

 duced from tin- letter of the Bcriptures, in regard to the age of tin 

 : but we cannot east oil' our received opinions in regard to the 

 1 i 1 1 1 ( - which man has inhabited the earth', without first feeling assurt d 

 that those hatchet-bearing gravels must be several thousand 

 older than the Pyramids of Egypt." 



i 



A communication has been read to tin < logical Socii ty, "< 



some Arrow-heads and other li found with Hoi 



Crm in a «a\<ni in LangUedOC." Bj .M . E, l.ai'ol, 



Por.M.G i. 



In a cav< in of tla- Hi , ■ in Langue- 



doc (Department of th u< d by M. A. Eontai 



as found to consist of a blackish earth, with large roui 



