﻿ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. Ixi 



workmen for a single instant, and to satisfy oneself by actual in- 

 spection -whether the hatchets were found in situ. I caused a deep 

 excavation to be made, without quitting the workmen for a moment : 

 I found nine hatchets most distinctly in situ, in the diluvium, asso- 

 ciated with teeth of Equus fossilis, and a species of Bos different from 

 any now living and similar to that of the diluvium and of caverns* 

 The exact determination of the position of the hatchets proves, be- 

 yond all doubt, that Man had been contemporary with several of the 

 larger animals that no longer exist, whose bones are now fossil. 

 One may easily be satisfied that the gravel beds are in their normal 

 state, and that they have not been remanies by man. At St. Roch, 

 near St. Aeheul, the diluvium has been found to contain remains of 

 the Rhinoceros tichorliinus, Elephas primi genius, and Hippopotamus ; 

 and M. Buteux has ascertained that the beds of diluvium of St. Roch 

 are continuous with those of St. Aeheul*." 



On the 7th of last May, M. Beaudoin announced to the Geological 

 Society of France a discovery he had made of worked flints in un- 

 disturbed drift in the neighbourhood of Chatillon-sur-Seine ; and on 

 the 20th of the same month M. de Yerneuil communicated a similar 

 discovery at Precy, in the department of the Oise. Thus we have evi- 

 dence of the same event in the valleys of the Somme, the Seine, and 

 the Oise. More recently, M. E. Collomb, in a letter published in the 

 ' Bulletin de la Societe Vaudoise des Sciences Naturelles ' for October 

 1860, gives an account of a visit he paid to St. Aeheul in company 

 with M. Lartet ; and he fully confirms the accuracy of the observa- 

 tions of Mr. Prestwich and M. Gaudry, as to the age and undisturbed 

 condition of the gravel in which the worked flints are found. He 

 observes that almost the whole of the north of Prance, and especially 

 the plains, is in a condition the most favourable, the most normal, 

 for the study of the quaternary deposits (terrains quartaires), be- 

 cause, during that long period, no extraordinary events have occurred 

 in that region ; there have been no great cataclysms, no sudden ele- 

 vations or dislocations ; no glaciers which could have broken up and 

 rearranged (remanie) the soil, and changed the regular order of the 

 superposition of the beds. 



Additional evidence in support of the same views has been recently 

 supplied by the publication of a memoir communicated to the Society 

 of Antiquaries by John Evans, Esq., a Fellow of this Society, who 

 accompanied Mr. Prestwich in his examinations at Abbeville and St. 

 Aeheul. He states that he was himself witness to the extraction of 

 a worked flint from the gravel bed at St. Aeheul, at a depth of 11 

 feet from the surface, and about 4^ feet from the bottom of the pit ; 

 — that, on another occasion, Mr. Flower, one of the party of geolo- 

 gists, uncovered and exhumed with his own hands a perfectly worked 

 instrument at a depth of 20 feet from the surface ; — that the imple- 

 ments occur most certainly in undisturbed gravel, for it is so hard 

 and compact as to require the use of a pickaxe, and therefore pre- 

 cludes all idea of its being a reconstructed mass; — that there is 

 every improbability of the bones of extinct species of quadrupeds 

 * ' Comptes Rendus ' of the above-mentioned dates. 



