WITH CERTAIN EXTINC® QUADRUPEDS. 379 
had evidently been cut. On this M. Lartet observes—“ It is very 
true, as Dr. Falconer remarked, that M. Marcel de Serres gave a 
figure in 1839 of a Stag’s horn cut and fashioned by human hands. 
I had occasion to remark that, a long time before, M. Tournal 
in 1829 (Ann. des Sc. Nat. 1829, t. xviii. pp. 242 et seq.) and 
Schmerling in 1833 (dog. cit.) had made similar observations. I 
might myself have stated that among the bones of caverns I had 
seen those of the Rhinoceros and the Reindeer bearing marks that 
must have been made by man; but I was on my guard against 
bringing forward those facts, because they would only have afforded 
opponents an opportunity of bringing forward anew their favourite 
objection, viz. ‘that nothing that had been observed in caverns was 
deserving any confidence, and that the traces left by man on fossil 
bones might have been made a long time after the introduction of 
the bones into the caverns.’ 
«‘ What constitutes the whole value of my observations on the 
impressions or marks of human agency on the fossil bones found in 
the diluvial deposits of Abbeville, and in the cutting of the Canal 
de l’Ourcg, is this, that, once admitting the reality of those marks, 
their relative antiquity becomes rigorously demonstrated by the 
geological circumstances of their locality being clearly defined. At 
Abbeville the marked bones, as well as the flint hatchets, were found 
in the diluvial gravel, whick is itself covered by the Loess deposit. 
In the cutting of the Canal de lOurcq, the bones of the Aurochs and 
those of the Megaceros Hibernicus were found at a depth of 7 métres 
(23 feet,) in a bed of earth (limon) and under other beds in normal 
stratification. They were not rolled (as Cuvier has said,) and were 
mixed with the remains of an Elephant, and evidently under the 
conditions of an original deposit. 
“ At the meeting of the Geological Society of France yesterday 
evening, M. de Verneuil exhibited a worked flint hatchet, and an 
Elephant’s tusk found in the gravel-pit of Précy, near Creil, in the 
valley of the Oise. Thus these worked flints have been found in the 
diluvium of three of our valleys—of the Somme, the Seine, and the 
Oise.” 
