498 ETHNOLOGY AND ARCHEOLOGY. 



his adhesion to the opinions pi'eviously expressed by Aymard. My friend, Mr, 

 Scrope, iu the second edition of his ' Volcanoes of Central France,' lately pub- 

 lished, also adopted the same conclusion, although after accompanying me this 

 year to Le Puy, he has seen reason to modify his views. The result of our joint 

 exariii nation, — a result which I believe essentially coincides with that arrived at 

 by MM. Hubert and Lartet, names well known to science, who have also this year 

 gone into this inquiry on the spot, — may thus be stated : We are by no means 

 prepared to maintain that the specimen in the museum at Le Puy — which unfor- 

 tunately was never seen in situ by any scientific observer, — is a fabrication. On 

 the contrary, we incline to believe that the human fossils in this and some other 

 specimens from the same hill, were really imbedded by natural causes in their 

 present matrix. But the rock in which they are entombed consists of two parts, 

 one of which is a compact and, for the most part, thinly laminated stone, into 

 which none of the human bones penetrate ; the other, containing the bones, is a 

 lighter, and much more porous stone, withoiit lamination, to which v.'e could find 

 nothing similar in the moimtain of Denise, although both M. Hebert and I made 

 several excavations on the alleged site of the fossils. M. Hebert, therefore, sug- 

 gested to me, that this more porous stone, which resembles in colour and mineral 

 composition, though not in structure, parts of the genuine old breccia of Denise, 

 may be made up of the older rock broken up and afterwards re-deposited, or, as 

 the French say, ' remane,' and therefore of much newer date ; an hypothesis 

 which well deserves consideration; but I feel that we are at present so ignorant 

 of the precise circumstances and position under which these celebrated human 

 fossils were found, that I ought not to waste time in speculating on their probable 

 mode of interment, but simply declare that, in my opinion, they afford no demon- 

 stration of Man having witnessed the last volcanic eruptions of central France. 

 The skulls, according to the judgment of the most corftpetent osteologists who 

 have yet seen them, do not seem to depart in a marked manner from the modern 

 European or Caucasian type, and the human bones are in a fresher state than 

 those of the Elephas meridionalis, aud other quadrupeds found in any breccia of 

 Denise which can be referred to the period even of the latest volcanic eruptions. 

 But while I have thus failed to obtain satisfactory evidence in favour of the re- 

 mote origin assigned to the human fossils of Le Puy, I am fully prepared to cor- 

 roborate the conclusions which have recently been laid before the Royal Society 

 by Air. Frestwich, in regard to the age of the fiint implements associated in un- 

 disturbed gravel, in the north of France, with the bones of elep^iants, at Abbe- 

 Tille and Annens. These were first noticed at Abbeville, and their true geologi- 

 cal position assigned to them by M. Boucher de Perthes, in 1849, in his ' Anti- 

 quites Celtiques;' while those of Amiens were afterwards described iu 1855, by 

 the late Dr. KigoUot. For a clear statement of these facts, I may refer you to 

 the abstract of Mr. Prestwiek's Memoir, in the Proceedings of the Royal Society 

 for 1859, and have only to add that I myself have obtained abundance of flint 

 implements (some of which are laid upon the table) during a short visit to 

 Amiens and Abbeville. Two of the worked flints of Amiens were discovered in 

 the gravel-pits of St. Aeheul— one at the depth of ten feet and the other of seven- 

 teen feet below the surface, at the time of my visit ; aud M. Georges Pouchet, of 



