ADDRESS. Ixxiii 



also in the gravel where the implements occur. At Menchecourt, in the sub- 

 urbs of Abbeville, a nearly entire skeleton of the Siberian Rhinoceros is said 

 to have been taken out about forty years ago, a fact affording an answer to the 

 question often raised, as to whether the bones of the extinct mammalia could 

 have been washed out of an older alluvium into a newer one, and so rcdepo- 

 sited and mingled with the relics of human workmanship. Far-fetched as was 

 this hypothesis, I am informed that it would not, if granted, have seriously 

 shaken the proof of the high antiquity of the human productions, for that 

 proof is independent of organic evidence or fossil remains, and is based on 

 physical data. As was stated to us last year by Sir C. Lyell, we should still 

 have to allow time for great denudation of the chalk, and the removal from 

 place to place, and the spreading out over the length and breadth of a large 

 valley of heaps of chalk flints in beds from 10 to 15 feet in thickness, covered 

 by loams and sands of equal thickness, these last often tranquilly deposited, 

 all of which operations would require the supposition of a great lapse of time. 



That the mammalian fauna preserved under such circumstances should be 

 found to diverge from the type now established in the same region, is con- 

 sistent with experience ; but the fact of a foreign and extinct fauna was not 

 needed to indicate the great age of the gravel containing the worked flints. 



Another independent proof of the age of the same gravel and its asso- 

 ciated fossiliferous loam is derived from the large deposits of peat above 

 alluded to in the valley of the Somme, which contain not only monuments 

 of the Roman, but also those of an older Stone Period, usually called Celtic. 

 Bones also of the Bear, of the species still inhabiting the Pyrenees, and of 

 the Beaver, and many large stumps of trees, not yet well examined by bota- 

 nists, are found in the same peat, the oldest portion of which belongs to 

 times far beyond those of tradition; yet distinguished geologists are of opi- 

 nion that the growth of all the vegetable matter, and even the original scoop- 

 ing out of the hollows containing it, are events long posterior in date to the 

 gravel with flint implements, nay, posterior even to the formation of the up- 

 permost of the layers of loam with freshwater shells overlying the gravel. 



The exploration of caverns, both in the British Isles and other parts of 

 Europe, has in the last few years been prosecuted with renewed ardour and 

 success, although the theoretical explanation of many of the phenomena 

 brought to light seems as yet to baffle the skill of the ablest geologists. 

 Dr. Falconer has given us an account of the remains of several hundred 

 Hippopotami obtained from one cavern near Palermo, in a locality where 

 there is now no running water. The same palaeontologist, aided by Col. 

 Wood of Glamorganshire, has recently extracted from a single cave in the 

 Gower peninsula of South Wales, a vast quantity of the antlers of a reindeer 

 (perhaps of two species of reindeer), both allied to the living one. These 

 fossils are most of them shed horns ; and there have been already no less 

 than 1100 of them dug out of the mud filling one cave. 



In the cave of Brixham in Devonshire, and in another near Palermo in 



