PLEISTOCENE RIVER-DEPOSITS. 123 



ficial deposits of loam, sand, and gravel, the relations of which, 

 both to older and younger geological formations, can be more or 

 less distinctly traced. And along with these osseous remains 

 have been found immense numbers of worked flints of the same 

 general character, as those which occur in our caves. We must 

 now for a little glance at the evidence of the ancient deposits in 

 which these remarkable relics of primeval times lie entombed. 



It is to M. Boucher de Perthes of Abbeville that the honour 

 must be assigned of having been the first to direct the attention 

 of scientific men to the occurrence of worked flints along with 

 bones of extinct animals in beds of undisturbed sand and gravel. 1 

 His discoveries, however, were for long years neglected both by 

 French and English geologists ; and it was not until after the 

 exploration of Brixham Cave had overturned our preconceived 

 notions of the antiquity of man, and his contemporaneity with 

 the extinct animals, that the investigations of the Abbeville 

 antiquarian began to attract notice. Perhaps one of the reasons 

 why the French discoveries were so long passed over by English 

 scientific men was the general conclusion arrived at by Boucher 

 de Perthes, that the flint implements and mammalian remains 

 were entombed together by the waters of the Noachian deluge. 

 By geologists in this country the idea of a general deluge had 

 long been discredited ; and so deeply had uniformitarian doc- 

 trines been imbibed, that debacles and deluges of any kind had 

 come to be looked upon with considerable disfavour. It could 

 be shown that the slow, continuous action of frost and rain 

 and running-water was capable in time of effecting enormous 

 changes on the surface of the globe ; and it was considered un- 

 philosophical to call in the agency of such accidents as ddb&cles 

 and deluges to account for appearances which could be well 

 explained without their aid. When an author, therefore, seemed 



1 So far back as 1797, however, an English antiquarian, Mr. John Frere, had 

 described the occurrence of flint "weapons of war" and some "extraordinary 

 bones " in undisturbed strata of gravel and sand at Hoxne, in Suffolk. Archoeo- 

 logia, vol. xiii. p. 204. Mr. Frere's interesting letter is given in extenso by Mr. 

 Prestwich in the "Author's Copies" of his famous paper, read to the Royal 

 Society in 1859. Philosophical Transactions, Part II., 1860, p. 277. 



