398 



THE GEOLOGIST, 



Central Prance,' lately published, also adopted the same conclusion, although 

 after accompanying me this year to Le Pay, he has seen reason to modify his 

 views. The result of our joint examination, a result wliich I believe essentially 

 coincides with that arrived at by M. Hebert and M. Lartet, names well known 

 to science, who have also this year gone into this inquii-y on the spot, may 

 thus be stated. We are by no means prepared to maintain that the specimen 

 in the museum at Le Puy (which unfortunately was never seen hi, situ by any 

 scientific obseiTer) is a fabrication. On the contrary, we incline to believe that 

 the human fossils in this and some other specimens from the same hill were 

 really imbedded by natural causes in their present matrix. But the rock in 

 wliich they are entombed consists of two parts, one of which is a compact, and 

 for the most part thinly laminated stone, into which none of the human bones 

 penetrate ; the other containuig the boiies is a lighter and much more porous 

 stone without lamination, to which we could find nothing similar in the 

 mountain of Denise, although both M. Hebert and I made several excavations 

 on the alleged site of the fossils. M. Hebert therefore suggested to me that 

 this more porous stone, which resembles in colour and mineral composition, 

 though not in structure, parts of the genuine old breccia of Denise, may be 

 formed of the older rock broken up and afterwards re-deposited, or as the Prench 

 say, remane, and therefore of mucli newer date — an hypothesis which well 

 deserves consideration ; but I feel that we are at present so ignorant of the 

 precise circumstances and position under which these celebrated human fossils 

 were found, that I ought not to v/aste time in speculating on their probable 

 mode of interment, but simply declare that in my opinion they afford no de- 

 monstration of man having witnessed the last volcanic eruptions of Central 

 Prance. The skulls, accordmg to the judgment of the most competent osteolo- 

 gists who have yet seen them, do not seem to depart in a marked manner from 

 the modern European, or Caucasian type, and the human bones are in a fresher 

 state than those of the Elephas meridionalis and other quadrupeds found in any 

 breccia in Denise which can be referred to the period even of the latest volcanic 

 eruptions. But whUe I have thus failed to obtain satisfactory evidence in 

 favour of the remote origin assigned to the human fossils of Le Puy, I am fully 

 prepared to corroborate the conclusions which have been recently laid before 

 the Boyal Society by Mr. Prestwich, in regard to the age of the flint-imple- 

 ments associated, in undisturbed gravel in the north of Prance, with the bones 

 of elephants at Abbeville and Amiens. These were first noticed at Abbeville, 

 and their true geological position assigned to them by M. Boucher de Perthes, 

 in 1849, in his ' Antiquites Celtiques,' while those of Amiens were afterwards 

 described, in 1855, by the late Dr. Bigoilet. Por a clear statement of the facts, 

 I may refer you to the abstract of Mr. Prestwich's memoir in the Proceedings 

 of the Boyal Society, for 1859, and I have only to add that I have myself oId- 

 tained abundance of flint-implements (some of which are laid upon the table) 

 durmg a short visit to Amiens and Abbeville. Two of the worked-flints of 

 Amiens were discovered in the gravel-pits of St. Acheul, one at the depth of 

 ten, and the other of seventeen feet below the surface, at the time of my visit ; 

 and M. Georges Pouchet, of Rouen, author of a work on the ' Races of Man,' 

 who has since visited the spot,. has extracted with his own hands one of these 

 implements, as Messrs. Prestwich and Plower had done before hun. The 

 stratified gravel, in wliich these rudely-fashioned instruments are bui"ied, 

 resting immediately on the Chalk, belongs to the post-pliocene period, aU the 

 fresh-water and land-shells which accompany tliera being of existing species. 

 The great number of the fossil instruments which have been lilvcned to hatchets, 

 spear-heads, and wedges is truly wonderful. More than a thousand of them 

 have already been met with in the last ten years, in the valley of the Somme, 

 in an area fifteen miles in length. I infer that a tribe of savages, to whom the 



