The Flint Tools of North Devon. 351 



blow was administered to strike it off from the mass ; cor- 

 responding depressions may be seen on the other facets of the 

 flake, thus showing that it is the result, not of one chance 

 blow, but of at least three or four successive blows, each 

 administered in the proper place, and consequently it must 

 have been the work of an intelligent being.* 



Secondly, are the drift-beds of the immense age assigned to 

 them by geologists ? In the valley of the Somme, for example, 

 where they are considered by the highest authorities to be of 

 fiuviatile origin, was the detritus necessary for their formation 

 brought down by the rivers, torrents, and glaciers of old, at a 

 uniform rate, one year after another ? for if the accumulating 

 force was irregular or intermittent in its action, then measure- 

 ments and calculations of thickness in feet and inches can 

 afford us no very satisfactory criterion of age. A lake will 

 soon form in a valley, especially if the surrounding district 

 is uninhabited, or peopled by a race of savages. A tree 

 will fall across the stream, this will cause others brought 

 down by the torrent to accumulate on the same spot, and by 

 degrees an embankment of considerable height will arise to 

 restrain the flow of the river, and form a lake. But after a 

 time either the increasing pressure of the pent-up water, or 

 the decay of some material composing the bank, will cause the 

 barrier to burst, and not only will the accumulated matter be 

 brought down by the flood, but for miles it will sweep away 

 every obstruction, scoop out the river-bed, and form, when its 

 violence is expended, a thick bed of debris, which will spread 

 over the whole width of the valley, and be almost uniform in 

 its thickness. Thus although from the general conformation 

 of the ground it is improbable that such a lake ever existed in 

 the immediate neighbourhood of Abbeville or Amiens, where 

 the valley of the Somme is little less than a mile in width, 

 still if a cataclysm of this nature took place further up, in the 

 contracted part of the valley, it would not only account in 

 part for the low-level drift, but also for the fact that the 

 ' c tools" are found at such an unequal depth below the surface. 

 Thus they are sometimes met with at a depth of 30 feet. 

 One mentioned by Sir C. Lyell in his address to the British 

 Association at Aberdeen in 1859, was found in the pit of St. 

 Acheul, near Amiens, at a depth of 10 feet. Mr. Evans, too, 

 in his paper to the Society of Antiquaries, read June 2, 1859, 

 states that in the same pit he saw one in situ, 11 feet from 

 the surface. Another, found by him at Hoxne in Suffolk, lay 

 at a depth of 8 feet, and some from Long Low, Wetton, are 

 described in the same paper as occurring " near the surface ; 



* See Arcliceologia, yol. xxxix., p. 76. 



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