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Molluscan Fauna, which plays so important a part in ages of geo- 
logic time, is absolutely the same. The general aspect of animal 
life is the present aspect, with the exception that a certain number 
of species of the larger Herbivora and Carnivora have become ex- 
tinct. But such extinctions, local in many instances, and total in 
some, have taken place in historic times, and are in visible process 
of accomplishment even now. Such extinctions do not constitute a 
new Fauna, nor, according to the received principle of classifying 
past times, do they mark a new geological age. The era of man, 
therefore, remains, geologically speaking, in the same relative place 
in which it stood before — the very last and latest of the world. 
But the fact that human implements are found under great beds 
of gravel and of earth formed by water, whether of rivers or of the 
sea, at an elevation which in either case would imply changes of 
level, such as, if general, would be enough to revolutionize the 
whole aspect of our now habitable surface, is a fact which casts new 
and important light on the (geologically speaking) very recent date 
at which those changes have taken place. 
Whether the men who formed the implements were or were not 
contemporary with the living quadrupeds whose bones are associated 
with these implements, seems to me a subordinate question. The 
mere fact of such association may not absolutely prove the point, 
because it is conceivable that the bones may have been merely re- 
aggregated from an older fossiliferous deposit. But I suspect that 
the reluctance to admit the contemporaneity of man with those 
animals results from the reluctance to admit man’s priority to such 
physical changes as are supposed to separate us from a Fauna 
typified by the Mammoth and the Elk. If, therefore, the fact of 
such priority be proved from the stratigraphical position of the flint 
relics, wholly independent of any argument derived from organic 
remains, the importance of the question respecting the human age 
of the great mammals will be much diminished. It may be well, 
therefore, to keep our attention firmly fixed on what is the really 
important question — the nature and position of the strata in which, 
and under which, the flint implements have been interred. Going 
no farther for light upon this question than the particular beds at 
Amiens and Abbeville in France, where the implements have been 
found in greatest abundance, it is enough to record the facts. The 
flints are embedded in a stratum of gravel, which rests directly on an 
