238 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
rOEEIGN INTELLIGENCE. 
Earthquake sliocks were felt at Dijon on the 17th and 18th of April last. 
Professor Lecoq, of Clermont-Ferrand, has presented to the French 
Academy of Sciences his magnificent geological map of the Puy-de-D6me, 
on -which he has laboured so many years. 
The Society of Agriculture, Science, and Art, of Poligny (Jura), have 
announced that they will meet on the 22nd June and hold a sort of Con- 
gress, to which the French geologists and palaeontologists are invited. 
The railway works at the foot of the Jura have traversed, near the village 
of St. Lothaire, a tertiary basin which, upon a liassic basement, supports a 
moraine exhibiting all the usual characteristics, and which, in its turn, is 
covered by a turf deposit containing bones of EhpJias primigenius, deer, 
rhinoceros, etc. In the Lias shales near by, important remains of enor- 
mous saurians have been met with ; and the Poligny Society consider it 
will be very interesting for the French savants to visit these interesting 
cuttings before the completion of the works renders their investigation diffi- 
cult or impossible. 
Undoubtedly geologists at the present time are trenching, in their in- 
vestigations, on the domains of the archaeologist and historian ; and it is diffi- 
cult to see how, in the present exciting investigations on the antiquity of 
man, such trespasses are to be avoided. Many are accidental, many are 
designed ; but without keeping their eyes well open, to the doings of the 
antiquary especially, geologists cannot arrive at proper conclusions. This 
necessity must be our excuse now, as well as on many other occasions both 
past and future, for including in our pages notices of subjects not strictly 
geological. How can it be otherwise ? We have traces in the Drift of 
human relics ; the same in peat-beds and alluvial deposits of very great 
antiquity ; and antiquaries, as a rule, have hitherto had no idea of going 
beyond the Celtic epoch. The oldest monuments, therefore, of man's exist- 
ence in our own and neighbouring lands are usually assigned, with no other 
warranty than their antiquity, to that race. The recorded circumstances 
under which such early relics are found are not, however, always satisfying 
to the geologist of the correctness of these assignments. Such is the case with 
the so-called Celtic boat lately found in a fluviatile deposit during some en- 
gineering works on the Upper Khine at Cordon. This boat is formed of a 
single trunk of a tree, hollowed out like the canoes of savages. It measures 
about eight or nine yards long by about two yards in breadth. The wood 
of which it is composed is said to be " completely petrified or fossil ;" and 
its place of embedment in the earth is stated as being " under a bed of 
sand and gravel." The local antiquaries naturally attribute this interest- 
ing relic to the Allobroges, a people of Transalpine Gaul, that in the time 
of Caesar inhabited this part of Eoman Provence — and which supposition 
may be right, if the " sand and gravel" mentioned be merely recent river- 
drift. But are not the circumstances worthy of the scrutiny of geologists ? 
We have certainly seen in the gravel at Ashford (in Kent), at Bedford, 
near Heme Bay, and other places, seams of dark coaly bits of wood which 
might be the debris of piles, huts, or boats of the men of the flint-implement 
age. Such M oody seams should be searched ; and whenever ancient canoes, 
and other such decisive relics, are found in or under gravel, we think it is 
the duty of geologists to satisfy themselves and the world of what age such 
gravel is. S. J. M. 
