FOEEIGIS" INTELLIGENCE. 



147 



Eetter judging than many otlier workmen who daily make similar dis- 

 coveries without informing any one of them, these of Montaigu at once 

 carried the object found to Dr. Lejeune, the proprietor of the 'ash' 

 quarry, whose house was close by. It could not have fallen into better 

 hands. At the first glance M. Lejeune saw that the ball was really of 

 human workmanship, and he in his turn hastened to inform me of the cir- 

 cumstances of the discovery, no similar occurrence to which, as I have 

 said, has happened within the memory of the workmen. However, long 

 before this discovery, the workmen of the quarry had told me they had 

 many times found pieces of wood changed into stone (the wood which is 

 found in the lignites is nearly always, as we know, transformed into silex) 

 bearing the marks of human work. I regret greatly now not having asked 

 to see these, but I did not hitherto believe in the possibility of such a 

 fact. 



" I ought to add that no suspicion of deception can be entertained. The 

 workmen who found the ball had never heard of M. Boucher de Perthes 

 and his discoveries, nor of the high questions of archaeology to which the 

 presence of worked-flints deep in the earth have given rise. The ball of 

 the ' ash-bed ' of Montaigu carries also upon itself the mark of its own 

 antiquity. It is easy to assure ourselves, on examining it with attention, 

 that if it be permissible still to doubt whether its embedment dates back 

 to the time when the bed was formed in which it was enclosed, it cannot 

 be denied that its burial is ancient, and goes back to a period greatly re- 

 mote from our own. The diameter of the ball is 6 centimetres, and it 

 weighs 310 grammes, or about 10 ounces. It is of white chalk, and in 

 this respect is distinguished from the stone- shot made use of for the ar- 

 tillery of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. These are constantly of 

 sandstone or other hard and heavy rock. I have never seen one in chalk. 

 Its form is imperfectly spherical, and its fracture unequal ; it seems to 

 have been fashioned with an instrument more blunt than cutting, from 

 which one would suppose that the maker had only coarse and ineffec- 

 tual tools. Three great splinters with sharp angles, announce also that it 

 had remained during the working attached to the block of stone out of 

 which it was made, and that it had been separated only after it was finished, 

 by a blow, to which this kind of fracture is due. 



" The workmen declare, as I have said, that the ball before falling to the 

 ground was placed between the ' ash-bed ' and the shell-bed which covered 

 it. Its examination confirms in every way this assertion. It is really 

 penetrated over four-fifths of its height by a black bituminous colour, 

 that merges towards the top into a yellow circle, and T^hich is evidently 

 due to the contact of the lignite in which it had been for so long a time 

 plunged. The upper part, which was in contact with the shell-bed, on the 

 contrary has preserved its natural colour — the dull white of the chalk. 



" I may add, that this last part gives with acids a lively effervescence, 

 characteristic of carbonates of lime, whilst the rest of the surface which is 

 impregnated with the bituminous matter alluded to, remains nearly in- 

 sensible to the action of these acids. As to the rock in which it was found, 

 I can affirm that it is perfectly virgin, and presents no trace whatever of 

 any ancient exploitation. The roof of the quarry was equally intact in 

 this place, and one could see there neither fissure nor any other cavity by 

 which we might suppose this ball could have dropped down from above 

 through all the series of beds which separate it from the surface of the 

 plain. 



" From what we have said, it remains then at least certain, that an ob- 

 ject, a baU of chalk, fashioned by the hands of man, has been found in the 



