(iHOLOCilCAL TOPICS. 
371 
these dials, all worked in the same manner, although for difl'erent purposes. 
"For the most jiart (here is a general reseiubhuice ol' form, which is ordinarily a 
flat, oval, of which the u])per part or thick cud is smooth, remaining in its 
])riuiitive state, while the sides and jioint are sulliciently sharp to liavepermited 
their use without recourse having been had to griiuling. 
"Others resemble a dagger (poignard) ; and sonic have the form of a triangular 
]\yraniid, of which the fastenings (aretes) are very irregularly hollowed out by 
the conchoidal chippings of the iliut. The figures we have given will convey the 
form of these productions of so remote an age ; thcii' medhim size is ten or twelve 
centimetres in their greatest diameter. There are others in which this dimension 
is only eight centimetres, and some in which it is twenty-four centimetres. 
" When one has seen some of these stones, they can be recognized immediately 
as belonging to the dOuvium. Those which M. Boucher de Perthes has found 
in tlie same deposit at Abbeville have a like form and are worked in the same 
nuimier. I could not say what has been their use ; and on this subject every 
liypothesis ought to be carefully excluded, and we should content oui'selves 
witii stating the facts in all theii- simplicity." 
M. E. de ilarsy also published a work on this subject entitled " "Rapport 
sur I'ouvrage de M. Boucher de Pertlies ayant pour titre, ' Des Monuments 
Celtiques et Antediluvieus' " (12mo., 1855). 
M. de Pei'thes now devotes a chapter of his book to " the erratic blocks, 
flints, and animal debris transported by ice." 
"This may at first appear foreign," he says, "to the subject of this book, 
but one will soon see why I insert it, and how transportation by ice has con- 
tributed to the formation of some deposits, and cCinsequeutly to the com- 
mingling of objects brought from many and often distant points. Hence one ought 
not to be astonished at finding in the diluvium debris of various origins, or 
bones of animals which have not inhabited the same lands, and even of the 
arms, signs, and instruments of stone worked by men who lived perhaps in 
very dili'erent countries. 
" How' the ice has been able to transport the boulders, the bones, and the dif- 
ferent detritus which compose these tertiary layers and analogous deposits 
I will now try to explain by the ideas which struck me for the first time 
when 1 traversed the glaciers of the Alps, and since when I have seen on the 
])eaks of the Pyrenees, on Etna, and other mountains those masses of snow of 
which the origin is lost in the night of Time, for if the superficial layers melt 
and are renewed, tlie snow beds below remain always the same. In what 
manner, then, were those first snow beds formed ? Why have they not 
annually disap])eared like those wliieh have followed them ? 
" It may be thought that at different epochs there have succeeded 
without interruption, during periods of more or less duration, violent 
storms of snow, of which the consolidated masses have at certain pomts ovcr- 
to])pcd the trees, fiUed up valleys, and enshrouded mountains, the earth for 
a great part of its surface presenting an immense plain over which there 
reigned but one season — winter. 
" This snow has consolidated and maintained itself throughout a vast period 
of time ; at this hour even it has not entii-ely disappeared, we see its remnants 
in our glaciers. 
" It was the melting of the snow of the plain and on the slopes of the moun- 
tains which produced a last deluge. But before this deluge swept the eartli, 
it is possible that entire families, especially of the herbivora — deprived of food, 
since it was buried imder that icy sheet — had been annihilated ; or if they were 
not suddenly destroyed, the alteration of climate would have arrested their re- 
production. One can comprehend that from this snowfall, and from its con- 
tinuance, there would have resulted a great refrigeration of the atmosphere 
