FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 
203 
" It is probable," he continues, " tbat when the peoples of Asia emi- 
grated westward on the look out for fertile countries, still retaining their 
fondness for stones, whether as a custom, a religion, or a sig-n, we 
know not, they established themselves naturally in the valleys, then 
deeper than at the present time, and watered by rivers which 
offered them, with resources of all kinds, a milder temperature than 
could be met with on the elevated plains. It is probable that often- 
times they were obliged to evacuate their habitations in consequence 
of considerable floods : hence the confusion of the remains so precipi- 
tately abandoned ; flints, with rolled stones of every kind, and real 
fossil-remains washed from the real diluvium, mixed vnth the bones 
of the animals, domestic or savage, drowned in the inundations." 
In the sand-pits at St. Acheul, near Amiens, hatchets have been 
found, which, though coarsely worked, appear to belong to two epochs ; 
some formed out of chesnut-brown — almost yellow flint, and with 
very round edges, apparently coming from a long way off, being 
much water-worn ; the others in bluish-black flint with white spots, 
more or less sharp, with very flat edges, do not appear to have been 
rolled at all. The angles in these last are as sharp as when they left 
the hand of the workman ; and one would say they had been fashioned 
on the very spot in which they are found. In fact, it is very easy to 
find rolled flints from which precisely similar hatchets could be made. 
M. Robert has in his possession the largest hatchet found in this 
locality ; it is thirty centimetres long, and weighs one thousand eight 
hundred grammes, and has, e^ddently been made from one of the 
cylindncal flints which there abound. 
Although the bed in which these celts have been found is forty 
metres above the level of the Somme, the greatest resemblance exists 
between it and those at Precy-sur-Oise, and near the Seine at Paris. 
Like these last the lower strata are composed of rolled stones, which 
contain in their ca\aties white sand and very delicate fresh- water 
shells (principally Lymnea), which would inevitably have been 
reduced to fragments in a strong current. The upper strata consists 
of a thick deposit of yellowish sand. 
One finds also at St. Acheul boulders of sandstone, which, however, 
are smaller than those at Precy on the Oise, which in their turn are 
smaller than those of the Paris basin. In fact, the size of these 
boulders is exactly proportional to the transporting force, whether ice 
or current. 
The nature of these worked flints may throw some light on the 
localities in which they are found, where all other means fail us. 
In the Commune of Gouvieux (Oise) there is an abrupt eminence, 
called Toutvoyes, where exists what is generally supposed to be a 
Roman camp. M. Robert attributes it to the Gauls, the first inhabi- 
tants ; for on carefully examining the locality, which was admirably 
chosen as a strategical position, he found spread upon the limestone 
soil a considerable number of hatchets, arrow-heads, and darts, formed 
out of flints obtained from the neighbouring chalk, or the fluviatile 
