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eroded surface of the chalk, and contains along with the hatchets the 
bones of the great extinct mammalia. This is again surmounted by 
a bed of sand from seven to ten feet thick, in which only a few rare 
bones and implements have been found. This is again capped by 
a second bed of gravel from two to five feet thick ; and lastly, on 
the top of all, is a bed of brick-earth, in which, as if to afford the 
very poetry of illustration, are to be seen the tombs of Roman Gaul. 
Such is the position of the beds with reference to each other. But 
what is their position with reference, not to each other, but to the sur- 
rounding country 1 The gravel-bed extends to points upwards of a 
hundred feet above the level of the river Somme, which occupies the 
bottom of the existing valley. It is described by Professor Rogers, 
a most competent and accurate observer, as extending to the 
summits of the plateaux which determine the existing drainage. 
Whether, therefore, the water which formed those beds were marine 
or fluviatile, in either case such changes of level are implied as 
would be sufficient, if general, to alter widely the existing distribu- 
tion of land and sea. 
Here, then, the question arises, Were those changes local — con- 
fined perhaps to the district of Western France ? Connected with 
this question, another immediately occurs : Is not this bed of gravel 
identical in character and composition with similar deposits in other 
countries ? Is there anything to distinguish it from the gravels 
containing precisely the same mammalian bones which are familiar to 
geologists in almost every country, and which have been recognised 
every here and there over the whole of Europe, from Siberia to 
Palermo, and from the basin of the Thames to the valley of the 
Danube 1 So far as I have been able to gather from the papers 
which have detailed the facts, there is nothing to indicate any dif- 
ference whatever, except that, at least until this discussion arose, 
human implements had nowhere else been recognised as associated 
with the drift. The absence of such remains elsewhere, however, 
would go for little in establishing a difference, because it is clear 
that the men who existed before the formation of the Abbeville beds 
were rude, and probably widely scattered savages, distant outliers of 
their race. The chances, therefore, were infinite against the preserva- 
tion either of them or of their works. But even this distinction, it would 
appear, is being broken down. It is now recollected that so long as 
sixty years ago, human implements had been discovered in Suffolk 
