﻿Ixiv PROCEEDINGS OP THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



served in natural repositories of higher antiquity than all the mauso- 

 leums, and tumuli, and vwoyaia, — in caverns, in peat-bogs, lacustrine 

 and river sediments, which derived their characteristic features from 

 the operation of physical conditions long since passed away. Thus, 

 deep in the sediments of many of our British valleys, left by the 

 rivers in some earlier period, we find the canoe of the primitive 

 inhabitant, hollowed by fire and rude stone chisels from the trunk 

 of the native oak." " To heap twenty or more feet of sediment over 

 the buried canoes by the ordinary operation of a river like the York- 

 shire Aire would require thousands of years : if it were not accumu- 

 lated under the ordinary circumstances now in operation, but under 

 different geographical conditions, this would perhaps require the 

 hypothesis of still longer time. In the alluvial sediments of this 

 same valley lie nearly complete skeletons of the extinct Hippopo- 

 tamus major; in another place jaws and horns of the deer, and 

 hazel wood and nuts, some of them petrified. Perhaps Man was 

 contemporary with this extinct Hippopotamus, which has also been 

 found in the peat-deposits of Lancashire. The gravel of Amiens 

 and Abbeville appears to furnish evidence of a higher antiquity for 

 the flint implements found there." 



The discoveiy in Egypt of works of art executed more than 3000 

 years before our era, which could only have been produced by a 

 people arrived at an advanced stage in the slow process of civiliza- 

 tion (a conviction that has been strengthened by the recent discovery 

 of works of human art at great depths in the alluvial soil of the 

 Nile valley, which accumulates at the average rate of a few inches 

 in a century *) has been gradually producing an impression in the 

 minds of earnest thinkers that the first appearance of man on the 

 earth must be carried far beyond the time hitherto usually assigned 

 to it. When we come to reflect upon the geological changes that 

 have occurred in the configuration and structure of the country in 

 the north of France where the flint implements are found, proved 

 by the nature of the deposit in which they are met with and its 

 elevation above the sea-level, and take into account the length of 

 time which, according to all sound reasoning on geological phenomena, 

 we must assign for the accomplishment of those changes, the largest 

 sum of years which has been assigned for the existence of man in 

 Egypt can scarcely amount to more than a fraction of the time that 

 has elapsed since the men lived who chipped those flint implements. 



The ground in which those worked flints were found at Amiens 

 and Abbeville is a part of a great post-pliocene deposit which is 

 spread over a great extent of the north of France, the geological age 

 of which is determined by the fragmentary materials, and by the 

 nature of the fossil remains of extinct species of quadrupeds. It is 

 marked in the geological map of France as composed of the group 

 designated the •• Alluviens anciennes de la Bresse, Sables des Landes, 

 Sables marins superieurs de Montpellier," resting upon another group 

 designated " Fahluns, MeidUres, Gres de Fontainebleau," &c. That 



* Memoirs on the Alluvial Laud of Egypt, Phil. Trans. 1855, p. 105, and 

 1858, p. 53, by the Author. 



