412 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



exhibiting evident impressions of human agency, was requested by the Presi- 

 dent, who had examined the specimens indicated, to communicate the results 

 of his researches to this Society. 



The specimens referred to are : — 1st, fragments of bones of Aurochs exhi- 

 biting very deep incisions, made apparently by an instrument having a waved 

 edge ; 2ndly, a portion of a skuU of Megaceros hibernicm, bearing significant 

 marks of the mutilation and flaying of a recently slain animal. These were 

 obtained from the lowest layer in the cutting of the Canal de I'Ourcq, near 

 Paris, and have been figured by Cuvier in his "Ossemens Possilis." Molars of 

 ElepJias primigenius found in the same deposit are figured by Cuvier, who states 

 that they had not been rolled, but had been deposited in an original and not a 

 remanie deposit. 3rdly, among bones, with incisions, from the sands of Abbe- 

 ville, are a large antler of an extinct stag {Cervus Somonensis) and several 

 horns of the common E.ed-Deer. 4thly, bones of Rhinoceros tichorhinus from 

 Menchecourt, near Abbeville, where flints worked by human hands have been 

 found. Sthly, portions of horns of Megaceros from the British Isles. In 

 reference to the remains of the Gigantic Deer, M. Lartet alludes to the Rev. 

 J. G. Cumming's statement that stone implements have been found in the Isle 

 of Man imbedded with remains of the Megaceros, and that hatchet-marks have 

 been seen on an oak-tree m a submerged forest of possibly still older date. 

 6thly, fragments of bone collected by M. Delesse from a deposit near Paris, 

 and exhibiting evidence of having been sawn, not with a smooth metallic saw, 

 but with such an instrument as the flint knives or splinters, with a sharp chisel- 

 edge, found at Abbeville would supply. 



If, says the author, the presence of worked flints in the gi^avel and sands of 

 the valley of the Somme have established with certainty the existence of man 

 at the time when those very ancient deposits were formed, the traces of an 

 intentional operation on the bones of Rhinoceros, Aurochs, Megaceros, Cervus 

 Somonensis, &c., supply equally the inductive demonstration of the contempo- 

 raneity of those species with the human race. M. Lartet points out that the 

 Aurochs, though stiQ existing, was contemporaneous with the JElephas primi- 

 genius, and that its remains occur in pre-glacial deposits ; and indeed that a 

 great proportion of our living mammifers have been contemporaneous with 

 E. primigenius and R. tichorhinus, the first appearance of which in Western 

 Europe must have been preceded by that of several of our still existmg 

 quadrupeds. 



The author accepts M. d'Archiac's determination of the period of the sepa- 

 ration of England from the Continent as having been anterior to the formation 

 of the ancient alluvium or " loess," but subsequent to the great rolled gravel- 

 deposits in which the flint hatchets of a primitive people are found. If M. 

 E. de Beaumont's hypothesis of these gravels being due to the last dislocation 

 of the Alps be accepted, the worked flints carried along with the erratic peb- 

 bles afford a proof of the existence of man at an epoch when Central Europe 

 had not yet fuUy received its present geographical featui-es. 



The author also remarks that though there is good evidence of the changes 

 of level having occurred since man began to occupy Europe and the British 

 Isles, yet tliey have not amounted to catastrophes so general as to affect the 

 regular succession of organized beings. 



Lastly, M. Lartet announced that a flint hatchet and some flint knives liad 

 lately been discovered, in company with remains of Elephant, Aurochs, Horse, 

 and a feline animal, in the sand's of the Parisian suburb of GreneUe, by M. 

 Gosse, of Geneva. 



