TRANSLATIONS AND SELECTED ARTICLES. 265 
three layers of ancient earth in question. The argillaceous nature 
of the latter appears to indicate that they owe their origin perhaps 
to inundations of an exceptional nature, forming deposits more muddy 
than stony, and this would have favored the development of vege- 
tation, and thus have attracted man to the spot. Here might be 
raised the objection that, our three layers having been deposited by 
the torrent, the ancient débris which they have furnished could equally 
have been brought here by the torrent, which might have brought 
them from elsewhere; and in this case the age of the three layers 
would remain undetermined. But the ancient remains had been well 
preserved and had not been rolled by the torrent; the fragments of 
pottery and baked earth were angular, as were also the small pieces of 
charcoal disseminated in each of these three layers, which also all 
three contained whole’shells, although very fragile, of different species 
of land mollusca. The objection is therefore inadmissible. 
Let us remark here that the minimum date of twenty-nine centuries 
for the layer of the age of bronze corresponds well with deductions, 
purely archzeological, which on their part also bring back the intro- 
duction of iron into our countries to at least a thousand years before 
the Christian era. This identity is so far complete that the character 
of the tweezers found in the layer of the age of bronze indicates rather 
the end than the beginning of that age: so that if this minimum of 
twenty-nine centuries for the date of the layer of the age of bronze 
conforms to truth, that of forty-seven centuries for the layer of the 
age of stone, and of seventy-four centuries for the age of the entire 
cone, is so, a fortiori, mm virtue of the calculation itself, whilst the 
maxima obtained may have remained below the reality. The maxi- 
mum of 110 centuries in particular for the age of the entire cone, is 
evidently under rather than over the real figure. It would result, 
nevertheless, from the date found, that the modern geological epoch, 
to which the cone or delta of the Tiniére corresponds, has not been 
very long, and that very soon after its commencement man invaded 
Europe, which is confirmed by the study of the turfy marshes in 
Denmark and Switzerland. Flints, cut by the hand of man, found in 
England and France in gravel, along with bones of elephants (elephas 
primigenius) and of other extinct species, make the apparition of man 
in Europe go back beyond what we ordinarily consider the modern 
geological epoch. 
We have thus endeavoured to conquer for remote antiquity the data 
Vout. VIII. U 
