FOREIG?^ INTELLIGENCE, 
147 
Better judgiug than many other ^yo^'k:nlen who daily make similar dis- 
coveries without informing any one of them, these of Montaigu at once 
carried the object found to Dr. Lcjeune, the proprietor of the 'ash' 
quarry, whose house was close by. It could not have fallen into better 
Lands. 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 Avorkmen. 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 archteology 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 oimces. 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 sitppose that the maker had only coarse and ineffec- 
tual tools. Three great splinters with sharp angles, annotmce 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 shcll-bcd which covered 
it. Its examination confirms in every wa}^ 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 \a 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 Imie, whilst the rest of the surface which is 
impregnated with the bituminotis matter alluded to, remains nearly in- 
sensible to the action of these acids. As to the rock in which it was fotmd, 
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 ball of chalk, fashioned by the hands of man, has been found in the 
