WITH CERTAIN EXTINCT QUADRUPEDS. 371 
remains of the Meygaceros imbedded in blue marl ‘‘ with implements 
of human art and industry, though of an uncouth and ancient cha- 
racter;’’ and ina note at the foot of page 344, alluding to a submarine 
forest, to which he is inclined to assign a more ancient date, he says, 
‘It is singular that the trunk of an oak tree, which has been removed 
from the submerged forest at Strandhall, exhibits upon its surface 
the marks of a hatchet.” With regard to the historical existence of 
the Megaceros, after referring to what is to be found in the works of 
Oppian, of Julius Capitolinus, and S. Miinster,* I have found nothing 
which appears to me to justify in this respect the opinion put forth 
by Dr. Hibbert, and since then accepted by other paleontologists, 
except Professor Owen, who, speaking of the Megaceros of the Bri- 
tish Isles, entirely dissents from the opinion of Dr. Hibbert. All 
the remains of that animal found on this side of the Channel, which 
I have examined, belong to deposits of greater antiquity than that of 
the peat-bogs. 
M. Delesse has shown you fragments of bone that have been sawn, 
which be recently obtained from a deposit in the neighbourhood of 
Paris, where he had previously collected remains of the Beaver, the 
Ox, and the Horse. From an examination of these fragments, I have 
satisfied myself, by experiments on recent bones, that the action of 
a metallic saw would not produce the transversally striated plane of 
section which you must have observed on those ancient bones collected 
-by M. Delesse ; but I have obtained analogous results by employing 
as a saw those flint knives, or splinters with a sharp chisel-edge, found 
in the sands of Abbeville. 
If, therefore, the presence of worked flints in the diluvial banks of 
the Somme, long since brought to light by M. Boucher de Perthes, 
and more recently confirmed by the rigorous verifications of several 
of your learned fellow-countrymen, have established the certainty of 
the existence of Man at the time when those ancient erratic deposits 
? For the text of Oppian I have consulted the French translation of the poem “de la 
Chasse” by Belin de Balu (1787), chant second, p. 42. Julius Capitolinus is quoted by Aldro- 
vandus, ‘de Quadrupedibus bisulcis,’ lib. i. c. xxviii. p. 857. Aldrovandus explains why he 
has ehanged his opinions after having received from an English physician the head of 
(Megaceros) Euryceros, which he has figured. There is another citation, and some con- 
clusions interesting to read, at page 742 of the same work. 
With regard to S. Minster, I have not taken notice of more than plate 9. fig. 2. of his 
“Cosmographia Universalis.” But you will find his text reproduced and interpreted by 
Dr. Hibbert in the Edinburgh Journal of Science, 1830, vol. ii. p. 307. Dr. Hibbert has 
likewise given the figures of Miinster, which are evidently fantastical, as admitted by the 
most eminent men of science in Germany. 
