412 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
cxliibit inj^ c\ iilciit impressions of human agency, was requested by the Presi- 
dent, wlio had examined the specimens indicated, to communicate the results 
of his researches to this Society. 
The specimens referred to arc : — 1st, fragments of bones of AurocJis exhi- 
biting very deep incisions, made apparently by an instrument liaving a waved 
edge ; 2ndly, a portion of a skull of Megaceros liihcrniais, bearing significaut 
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'Ourcn, near 
Paris, and have been figured by Cuvier in his " Ossemens Possilis." Molars of 
Elcphas jirimir/cHiu.i 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 {Cenm Sonioneiisis) and several 
homs of the common Red-Deer. 4thly, bones of Rhinoceros tichorhinus from 
Mcnclieeourt, near Abbeville, wliere flints worked by human hands have been 
found. 5thly, portions of horns of Megaceros from the British Isles. In 
reference to the remains of t he Gigantic Deer, M. Lartet alludes to the Rev. 
J. G. Cumming's statement that stone implements have been found in the Isle 
of ]\lan imbedded with remains of the Megaceros, and that hatchet-marks have 
been seen on an oak-tree in a submerged forest of possibly still older date. 
6thly, fragmeuts 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 ehisel- 
cdge, found at Abbeville would supply. 
If, says the author, the presence of worked flints in the gravel 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 lihi/ioceros. Aurochs, Megaceros, Cerms 
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 still existuig, was contemporaneous with the Elephas 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 
Ij. primigeiiius and R. tichorhinus, the first appearance of which in Western 
Europe must have been preceded by that of several of our still existing 
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 tlie last dislocation 
of the Alps be accepted, the Avorked flints carried along with the erratic peb- 
Ijles afford a proof of the existence of man at an epoch when Central Eurojje 
had not yet fuUy received its present geographical features. 
The author also remarks that though there is good evidence of the elianges 
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 Elepliaut, Aurochs, Hor.se, 
and a feline animal, in the sands of the Parisian suburb of Grenelle, by M. 
Gosse, of Geneva. 
