lxxii REPORT — 1860. 



have shown that ozone, whether admitted to be an allotropic modification of 

 oxygen or not, is certainly much more dense than oxygen in its ordinary 

 condition. 



In Metallurgy we may point to the investigations of Deville upon the 

 platinum group of metals, which are especially worthy of remark on account 

 of the practical manner in which he has turned to account the resources of 

 the oxyhydrogen blowpipe, as an agent which must soon be very generally 

 adopted for the finer description of metallurgic operations at high tempera- 

 tures. By using lime as the material of his crucibles and as the support for 

 the metals upon which he is operating, several very important practical 

 advantages have been obtained. The material is sufficiently infusible to 

 resist the intense heat employed ; it is a sufficiently bad conductor of heat 

 to economize very perfectly the high temperature which is generated ; and 

 it may be had sufficiently free from foreign admixture to prevent it from 

 contaminating the metals upon which the operator is employed. 



The bearing of some recent geological discoveries on the great question 

 of the high antiquity of Man was brought before your notice at your last 

 Meeting at Aberdeen by Sir Charles Lyell in his opening address to the 

 Geological Section. Since that time many French and English naturalists 

 have visited the valley of the Sorame in Picardy, and confirmed the opinion 

 originally published by M. Boucher de Perthes in 184*7, and afterwards con- 

 firmed by Mr. Prestwich, Sir C. Lyell, and other geologists from personal 

 examination of that region. It appears that the position of the rude flint- 

 implements, which are unequivocally of human workmanship, is such, at 

 Abbeville and Amiens, as to show that they are as ancient as a great mass of 

 gravel which fills the lower parts of the valley between those two cities, ex- 

 tending above and below them. This gravel is an ancient fluviatile alluvium 

 by no means confined to the lowest depressions (where extensive and deep 

 peat-mosses now exist), but is sometimes also seen covering the slopes of the 

 boundary hills of chalk, at elevations of 80 or 100 feet above the level of the 

 Somme. Changes therefore in the physical geography of the country, com- 

 prising both the filling up with sediment and drift and the partial re-excava- 

 tion of the valley, have happened since old river-beds were at some former 

 period the receptacles of the worked flints. The number of these last, already 

 computed at above 1400 in an area of fourteen miles in length and half a 

 mile in breadth, has afforded to a succession of visitors abundant opportunities 

 of verifying the true geological position of the implements. 



The old alluvium, whether at higher or lower levels, consists not only of 

 the coarse gravel with worked flints above mentioned, but also of superim- 

 posed beds of sand and loam, in which are many freshwater and land shells, 

 for the most part entire, and of species now living in the same part of France. 

 With the shells are found bones of the Mammoth and an extinct Rhinoceros, 

 R. lichorhinus, an extinct species of deer, and fossil remains of the Horse, Ox, 

 and other animals. These are met with in the overlying beds, and sometimes 



