96 GOSSIP ON ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 



elevation. What then would have been the effect upon the surface 

 deposits of the lands bounding the valley of the Somme ? The 

 broad waters would have been charged, first, with the uppermost 

 stratum, the remains of man and his works, and those of contempo- 

 rary fauna. Secondly, with remains of other and older mammalia — 

 all which would have been deposited in their order on the chalky 

 shelf (2 ci) in the eddies of the swift stream that ran at that height, 

 and have formed part of the alluvium (2 a) mingled with eocene 

 strata (2) and extending into the valley. Thirdly, with part of 

 the remaining unfossiliferous loam and drift which cap these gravels. 

 As the waters decreased, the stream, cuttiag through (2 a) would 

 have swept it nearly all away, depositing its sediment charged "svith 

 its material and other debris, at (3 a), which would then have been 

 the bottom of the valley, and in its turn would have succumbed 

 to the still decreasing downward impetuous flood; and all the finer 

 particles having now disappeared, would have left the rough gravel 

 (4) resting upon the chalk — the newest deposit except the pea*, 

 of the valley of the Somme — and then the waters having subsided 

 the river would have formed its present channel or something very 

 like it, and the peat would have begun to grow. 



This is my comment upon the geological deposits of the valley 

 of the Somme. If just, it rescues them from the long past ages 

 to which Sir Charles Lyell and other geologists have consigned 

 man and his works, and so far as these last are concerned, brings 

 them down to a period between the creation and the Noachian 

 deluge. It does not, however, necessarily impKcate this last event 

 as the sole agent by which these deposits were made, for oscillations 

 of the land and changes of level in this region, may have caused 

 inundations which would have produced the same results. But it 

 does show that the antiquity of man, judged by the received 

 chronology, need no longer be a subject of dispute, or doubt, 

 especially by the believers of Divine revelation. 



The generations immediately after the Noachian deluge, biu'ied 

 their dead out of their sight. We have a record of this in the life 

 of Abraham, who purchased the cave and the field of Machpelah 

 from Ephron the Hittite, the children of Heth being witnesses ; and 

 such burial places were held sacred, sometimes visited by surWvors, 

 and occasionally opened to admit another tenant to the narrow 



