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THE GEOLOGIST. 



FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE. 



The question of the "Terrain Quaternaire " and the antiquity of man 

 in the north of France, discussed at the Academy of Sciences on the oc- 

 casion of the discovery of the human jaw at Moulin-Quignon, has been 

 treated in detail by M. d'Archiac in his Museum lectures, now collected and 

 published by M. Trutet. M. d'Archiac does not share in the opinion of 

 M. Elie du Beaumont upon the general question of the degree of antiquity 

 of the human species, and relatively to the special case of the Moulin- 

 Quignon jaw, he does not support the opinion of the learned Perpetual 

 Secretary of the Academy as to the nature of the deposit. He believes 

 there is nothing in the least to justify the assertion that it is one of those 

 which come within the denomination of " meubles sur les pentes." The de- 

 posits on the declivities, if they are due to floods and torrential waters, dis- 

 play a particular structure, and require hollows in the soil which do not exist 

 in that district, and those which might be attributed to occasional erosions 

 of the rivers do not accord with the lines of ancient talus, but on the con- 

 trary, with common modern deposits. Moreover, the analogy of the de- 

 posit at Moulin-Quignon with those of other neighbouring localities incon- 

 testable quaternary does not permit a separation. The discovery of the 

 human jaw of Moulin-Quignon, whatever its authenticity, has in reality 

 but a secondary importance ; it is a simple fact confirming proofs of much 

 greater value by their number and generality. If the worked flints can- 

 not really be attributed to chance, if they are really the produce of human 

 industry, if they can be regarded as the evidence equally indisputable, of 

 the existence of man before the formation of the deposit which contains 

 them, — as the bones of elephants, rhinoceros, the great deer, hippopotamus, 

 bear, hysena, cave-lion, etc., are of the contemporary existence of those 

 animals, — it matters little whether we meet with, or do not meet with the 

 remains of man himself ; the question i* resolved by the fact, and it 

 matters little primarily whether the sand and the solid gravel of Moulin- 

 Quignon be or be not quaternary. The general essential result, the theo- 

 retical point which governs the question, namely, the antiquity of man 

 and his contemporaneity with the great extinct species of mammifers, 

 would not be affected, and the conclusion would lo«e nothing of its value 

 from being founded on the produce of human industry, instead of upon 

 the remains of man's skeleton. Regarding the facts acquired, we cannot re- 

 fuse to admit that the worked flints of Amiens and Abbeville are found in a 

 deposit essentially quaternary, associated with the bones of animals of ex- 

 tinct species, and except from particular circumstances there is no reason 

 to suspect the human jaw of Moulin-Quignon should not be contemporary. 

 Now however it remains to treat an essential point — the precise determi- 

 nation of the age of those deposits or the place they occupy in the quater- 

 nary series. This determination M. Archiac thinks very easy. Not by 

 seeking on the South terms of comparison where none exist, or of which, 

 if they did, we could not admit the value, but by going to the North-west 

 in the Low Countries where the quaternary series above and below the 

 level of the sea is to be seen in its true relations with the LTpper Tertiary 

 deposits ; or, better still, to the north in the eastern counties of England. 

 In the particular basin of the Somme, as in all the little depressions which 

 follow the watercourses which run from the divisional line of the Oise 

 directly to the sea, the deposits of transported detritus, ooze (limoneux), 

 sand, and gravels repose directly on the Chalk, excepting where the 



