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settlements taken together. The number of flint implements 
obtained hitherto from the drift of the Somme valley, is not 
estimated at more than 3,000 ; the settlement at Concise 
alone (Lake of JNeufchatel) has supplied about 24,000, and 
yet has not produced a single human skeleton. (Rapport a 
la Commission des Musees, October 1861, p. 16.) Probably 
this absence of bones is almost entirely attributable to the 
habit of burying ; the instinct of man has long been in 
most cases to bury his dead out of his sight ; still, so far as 
the drift of St. Acheul is concerned, the difficulty will 
altogether disappear if we remember that no trace has ever 
yet been found of any animal as small as a man. The larger 
and more solid bones of the elephant and rhinoceros, the 
hippopotamus, ox, and stag remain, but every vestige of the 
smaller bones has perished. Till we find the remains of the 
dog, boar, roe- deer, badger, and other animals which existed 
during the drift period, we cannot much wonder at the entire 
absence of human skeletons. 
In all the other places where flint implements have occurred 
they have been very rare (except perhaps at Hoxne), and 
though the ascertained mammalian fauna is not everywhere 
quite so restricted as at St. Acheul, still very few small 
animals have as yet occurred. 
I have as yet but partly answered the second of the two 
questions with which we started. Even admitting that the 
flint hatchets are coeval with the gravel in which they occur, 
it remains to be shown that the bones of the extinct animals 
belong also to the same period. With reference indeed to 
two of those ordinarily quoted as belonging to this group, 
there may still be some little doubt. It seems very question- 
able whether any remains really belonging to the cave-bear 
have ever occurred in these beds, as will presently be 
mentioned, and though a few tusks of the hippopotamus 
have been found, yet (as this genus never occurs in the 
