112 
Objects of metal have been often found in the French aud 
Irish peat at great depths, and at Abbeville, as we are told 
by Sir C. Lyell, a boat loaded with Roman bricks was found 
in the lowest tier of the peat. The erect stumps of the beech, 
three or four feet high, are frequently met with also in the 
peat-beds of the Somme valley, showing that they had formed 
with sufficient rapidity to cover up these stumps before they 
had time to decay. Now, the stumps of the beech, exposed 
in a damp situation, are especially perishable, and will not 
stand without decay more than fifty years. Even the stumps 
of the oak will not last under such circumstances more than 
one hundred years. The peat, therefore, at Abbeville, must, 
in some cases, have formed at the rate of three feet in fifty 
years, or six feet in a century. This may, howevei’, have been 
under peculiarly favourable conditions, and much of it may 
have formed more slowly. At the rate of one foot in a century, 
as the depth in some places is thirty feet, it may all have 
been formed in 3,000 years — and I doubt if it is older than 
this. 
6. M. Belgrand has pointed out that none of the peat could 
have been formed during the prevalence of the paleolithic 
floods, which, he remarks, were extremely violent, and when, 
he says, the amount of rainfall was so great, that it rolled on 
the surface of the most permeable soils. M. Belgrand assigns 
as a reason why the peat could not have formed during the 
palaeolithic epoch, that it never grows in muddy, turbid water ; 
and, he adds, that this fact proves further, that the chango 
from the large rivers of the palaeolithic age to the small rivers 
of the neolithic age, must have taken place suddenly. If, he 
observes, the change had been a gradual one, the valleys 
would have been filled, not with peat, but with gravel, sand, 
and alluvium. There is no peat in the valley of the Marne, 
because, owing to the impermeable nature of a part of its 
course, it is subject to violent floods of muddy water. So the 
Seine valley, down to Montereau, contains much peat, but 
below this point, where it is joined by the Yonne, no peat 
occurs, because the Yonne, like the Marne, receives its waters 
from an impermeable district, and is subject to similar floods 
of muddy water (Le Bassin Parisien aux ages ante-historigues ) . 
7. If M. Belgrand is correct, — and Professor Busk states 
that he has enjoyed unusual opportunities for studying this 
subject, — the transition from the paleolithic to the neolithic 
age must have been abrupt, and we must decline to accept the 
common theory, that there was a great hiatus or gap between 
these periods. 
