624 THE ICE AGE IN NORTH AMERICA. 



tention was paid to the matter, however, until 1859, when 

 Dr. Falconer, Mr. Prestwich, Mr. Evans, Sir Charles Lyell; 

 and other English geologists visited the locality, and brought 

 the discovery more fully to public attention. Full descrip- 

 tions may be found in the works of Sir Charles Lyell on 

 " The Antiquity of Man" * and Sir John Lubbock on " Pre- 

 historic Times." f 



The river Somme is a small stream, about one hundred 

 miles in length, occupying a broad, deep trough, about a mile 

 in width at Abbeville, worn out of chalk formations. Upon 

 the sides of this trough, up to an elevation of something over 

 one hundred feet, there are remnants of gravel terraces, 

 formed when the river flowed at a correspondingly higher 

 level than now. These terraces consist wholly of material 

 local to the Somme Yalley, and not in any degree of foreign 

 drift. The implements found are imbedded in undisturbed 

 strata of this gravel. In connection with them, also, there 

 are found bones of many animals now extinct, those of the 

 Elephas jprimigenius being specially numerous. 



Soon after the confirmation by these eminent authorities 

 of the important discoveries made by Boucher de Perthes, 

 examination showed that the same class of rudely formed 

 chipped stone implements occurred also in gravel- deposits in 

 southern England. The relation of these deposits to the 

 streams was similar to that of those in the valleys of north- 

 eastern France. Indeed, a discovery of palseoliths had been 

 made in England more than fifty years before, in the very 

 first years of the century ; but its importance was not sus- 

 pected until Boucher de Perthes's discoveries called attention 

 anew to the subject. Mr. John Frere had, in the year 1800, 

 described a collection of flints found at Hoxne near Diss, in 

 Suffolk, England, specimens of which were preserved in the 

 British Museum and in the collections of the Society of Anti- 

 quaries. These proved to be of the same type with those 

 found at Abbeville, and the deposits are of corresponding 



* P. 106 et seq. f P. 342 et seq. 



