FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 
291 
bones of extinct species of elephants, rliinoceros, &c., found at St. 
Aclieul and Meuchecourt, are mucli worn and water- rolled, and that 
those of the horse, aurochs, &c., are not ; they are very rarely water- 
rolled, and those that are belong as often to existing species as to 
extinct ones. (See Cuvier " Oss. Foss., Bceufs Fossiles," tome iv., 
p. 1G2, edition 4to, 18:^3.) No palaeontologist, since Cuvier, has 
endeavoured to draw a chronological distinction between the bones of 
the elephant, rhinoceros, horse, stag, and aurochs, mixed pell-mell in 
the same beds of diluvium, from which the hatchets and worked flints 
have since been obtained. The bones found at the above-mentioned 
places bear no comparison, either in colour or weight, with those of 
the turbaries or those belonging to existing domestic animals. 
M. B. de Perthes then asks, why the flood, which destroyed the 
habitations of man, and washed the bones of extinct species from the 
diluvium to mix with the drowning carcases of animals, did not wash 
up the bones of man also, and, supposing they burned the dead, the 
urns which contained the calcined dust ? Why, too, does not the 
resulting bed contain remains of dwellings, bricks, glass, metals, or 
indeed of any index of the first stage of civilization presented by the 
lacustrine deposits of Switzerland ? 
M. B. de Perthes then argues on the age of the flints as shown by 
their own colour, &c., and by the accompanying beds always being 
exactly similar, and then proceeds to ask, if the men of those days 
inhabited the deep vallies and were surprised by inundations which 
washed away their habitations and all they contained, how it is that 
these hatchets have been found more than thirty metres above the 
level of the vallies, found, too, associated with elephantine remains ; 
and how is it, again, that only these have been so carried 1 He con- 
cludes his paper in these words : — " If the diluvium where the bones 
and hatchets have been found, is not the veritable diluvium, where is 
it? Cuvier, Brongniart, M. Elie de Beaumont himself, and more 
recently Verneuil, Lartet, Colloinb, Prestwich, Lyell, and Murchison, 
have been strangely deceived, since they have mistaken that for it ; 
and stranger still, have recognized as virgin soil that which, according 
to M. Robert, is but a modern twice deposited alluvium. 
To the above communication of M, Boucher de Perthes, M. E/obert 
has replied at a subsequent date, to the following effect. 
He considers the most serions objection raised by M. de Perthes 
to be contained in the following question : — " If the men of that time 
inhabited the deep valleys and were there surprised by the flood 
which washed away their dwellings and all they contained, hatchets 
among the rest, how comes it that these hatchets are found thirty 
metres above the level of those valleys, and how have they been 
carried there with the bones of elephants, &c. ?" 
M. Robert submits the following explanation : — 
" At the time of the first appeai-ance of man in Europe, many ages 
after that great cataclysm which destroyed every breathing thing on 
