22 
It may, however, be said that other relics of man have been found ; that 
there is the testimony of the human jaw discovered by Boucher de Perthes 
deep in the Abbeville gravel. I need not stay to expose this fraud : all the 
scientific evidence is against the antiquity of the bone ; it has been 
abandoned as an unreliable relic by those who have examined the facts ; 
and it is now only held to by a few enthusiastic antiquaries with that 
fantastic faith — . ' . 
“ which once made last 
To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last. 
But there is the more important statement, supported by the authority of 
a few great names, that in the gravel-pits of St. Acheul, the beads which 
formed the necklaces of these ancient people have been discovered. „ From 
this spot I obtained seventy-two specimens of these so-called “ beads ; some 
of them had slight indentations on their surfaces, in others the perforations 
extended much deeper, and the more perfect specimens had a hole com- 
pletely through their centre ; these, when arranged according to their sizes, 
and placed on a string, form a very imposing supposititious necklace. The 
aid of science has been called in to determine the origin of these subglobular 
perforated bodies : they have been examined by Professor .Rupert Jones anc. 
Dr. Carpenter, and pronounced by them to be fossil organisms of the chalk. 
Professor Jones expresses such a clear and decided opinion as to their origin, 
that it puts an end to all controversy ; he says they “ occur in Bedfordshire, 
and at St. Acheul ; I have to state that, as everybody knows, they have been 
derived from the chalk, in which similar fossils are abundantly found, eit er 
in the perforated condition, or solid, or with a more or less shallow hole m 
their substance The concavity of the typical variety becomes m many 
of the globular forms a small cavity, a hole, or even a neat cylindrical perfo- 
ration. The last feature may be due, perhaps, to the Orbitolina having grown 
around a smooth stem of seaweed. At all events such perforated specimens 
are natural , and as abundant in the chalk as those of different conforma- 
tions I may add that the imperforate Orbitolina occur m the gravels 
just as much as the perforate. Also that the perforation of the nomdrifted 
specimens in the chalk is often just as smooth and straight as if artificial ; 
the interior surface is not worn, however, but consists of a natural structure 
of the organism.” ( The Geologist , vol. v. p. 23o.) , 
Thus these so-called beads are undoubtedly natural products, and they 
afford no proof whatever of the early existence of man ; they must be classed 
with such relics as St. Hilda’s snakes, St. Patrick’s loaves, and St. Cuthbert s 
beads ; and to arrange them on a string in the form of a necklace, and 
dangle them before the eyes of the uninformed as a relic and ornament o 
Palaeolithic man, is to drag science back into the ignorance and supersti- 
tion of the dark ages. It is impossible for any scientific man to recognize 
in these globular fossils the evidence of human manufacture. 
Thus we arrive at the conclusion that all the surroundings of the “ imple- 
ments ” testify to their natural production, and that their origin is geological 
and not antiquarian. 
