260 TRANSLATIONS AND SELECTED ARTICLES. 
custom of the time, and had covered it with earth; on the elevation 
thus produced they had, during the age of bronze, practised the 
funeral ceremonies of the epoch, and covered the whole with earth, 
dcubling the height of the hillock. Finally, in the age of iron they 
had buried a corpse by digging a grave at the top of the tomb. What 
appeared at first one grave may thus furnish objects of very different 
ages, and it is of great importance to execute the search with the neces 
sary care in order to determine the exact position of what is found there, 
if we do not wish to fall into grave errors. Messrs. Castan and 
Delacroix, at Besancon, surprised at finding objects apparently 
brought together , the association of which did not appear to them 
natural, succeeded in establishing in the interior of the same grave, 
not of great elevation, interments of the Roman epoch superposed 
on Gallic graves of the first age of iron. They have thus decided the 
question of an indigenous civilization possessing iron, and anterior to 
the arrival of the Romans. 
But the observations of superposition, notwithstanding all their 
worth, furnish only data of relative chronology, like those of geology, 
which does not recognise absolute dates; and yet we should like to know, 
when each of the three ages of stone, of bronze, and of iron commenced, 
and how long they each lasted. The most simple answer is to avow 
that we do not know. The introduction of iron is already an ante- 
historical event, even ante-traditional; how much more reason then, 
that the preceding ages of bronze and of stone should be beyond all 
recollection? It is only with the concurrence of geology that a solu- 
tion of the problem can be arrived at; here is an example which shows 
how the data of absolute chronology may be obtained. 
The alluvium of the torrent of the Tiniére, which empties itself in the 
lake of Geneva, at Villeneuve, forms a cone of deposit, (dejection) 
regular enough,—a delta in the shape of a fan, of about 100 degrees 
of opening, 900 feet radims (at its least), and 4 degrees inclination. 
The works of the railroad have cut through this cone, perpendicularly 
to its axis, through a length of 1000 feet and a height, attained in 
the central or the most elevated part of the cone, of 323 feet above 
the definitive level of the rails: The cut obtained may then be repre- 
sented by an are of a circle, or if we wish it, by a hyperbola, its: vertéx 
being elevated 32% feet above a subtending chord of 1000 feet. 
The interior constitution of the cone, thus opened, was found to: 
possess great regularity, a proof that the formation of the cone took: 
