5S4 PRIMEVAL MA>' 



a contributor to the ' Ossemens Fossiles ' ; but the keen 

 glance of Boucher speedily detected their import, and his 

 inferences received important confirmation from the subse- 

 quent discovery by Rigollot of similar flint-implements in 

 gravel sections near Amiens. But the observations of both 

 were either scorned or discredited. At the same time a 

 quiet observer, of matchless sagacity and indomitable per- 

 severance, Mr. Prestwich, was making the gravels in England 

 an object of special investigation. Engaged during a long 

 course of years upon the study of the European Tertiaries, 

 he gradually worked his way up to the superficial deposits. 

 Mr. Prestwich's researches upon the Tertiaries, which have 

 only been partially published, have earned for hhn the repu- 

 tation of being one of the ablest geological observers of his 

 time. But in the Quaternary sands and gravels he was un- 

 rivalled. Men have been in the habit of saying, in mingled 

 earnest and raillery, that 'point out a broken pebble amongst 

 a thousand others in a gravel-pit, and there is one who will 

 tell you the point of the compass from which it came, the 

 stratum which yielded it, the distance it had travelled, the 

 amount of rolling it had undergone, and the time it had 

 occupied in the journey.' The power thus acquired was 

 soon to be applied with clenching authority to the proofs of 

 the antiquity of man yielded by those deposits. But to 

 be productive, complex researches of this nature must be 

 subjected to the economic law of division of labour, which 

 controls alike the skilled results of artisanship in the manu- 

 facture of pins and buttons, and the intellectual efforts 

 which contribute to the advancement of knowledge ; special 

 application in either case determines the excellence of the 

 products. The mollusca occurring in the clays and gravels 

 had undergone the severest scrutiny ; but although com- 

 monly of such importance in geological chronology, their 

 value as indicative agents in this case was but trivial, all 

 the forms being of existing species. The fossil bones had 

 also been collected and named. The authority of Cuvier in 

 this latter walk of research was still paramount, and in most 

 cases governed the specific determinations of the remains of 

 the large extinct Mammalia which abound in the brick- 

 earths and gravels. In 1844 I made excursions to various 

 localities in the Yalley of the Thames, in company with my 

 friend the late Edward Forbes, and arrived at the conclusion 

 that they contained the remains of extinct species that were 

 then unrecognized. These results applied more especially 

 to the large fossil TJngulata, and to the Elephants in par- 

 ticular. In Parts I., II., and III. of the ' Fauna Antiqua 

 Sivalensis,' published in 1846 and 1847, figured evidence 



