SECTIONS AT ABBEVILLE. 
287 
men were digging the gravel (e, fig. 2) I saw them find, enveloped in the sandy matrix 
(a portion of which was agglutinated on the specimens), three thin sharp-edged flint-flakes, 
3 to 6 inches long. They were pronounced by M. de Peethes to be fliut-knives, and they 
certainly differ from ordinary flint splinters or flakes, in that, in each case, the obtuse 
angle is truncated, as though to flatten the fragment and remove an unnecessary edge*. 
Although I cannot accept such specimens as sufficient proof, and it would have been 
satisfactory to have found some of the so-called flint hatchets in situ, I feel there is, 
without that direct evidence, enough moral and collateral testimony to form an opinion 
on the subject of M. de Peethes’ \flews, supported especially as the case is by the 
occurrence of flint-implements elsewhere in the neighbourhood of Abbeville, and by the 
subsequent more easily verified discoveries at Amiens. 
According to M. Bouchee de Peethes, confirmed by the statements of the men, the flint- 
implements (Haches) are most commonly in the lower part of the sand d and in the gravel e. 
In the underlying marl, f, I found the few following shells, together with traces of 
plants [Chara stems'?) and one very minute bone, but no flint-implements. 
Cyclas '? Idmneus pereger, Miill. Trochus 1 (very young). 
Helix hispida, Linn. Planorhis alhus. Mull. Valmta piscinalis, Lam. 
nemoralis, L)rap. Pupa. Zua 1 
pulchella, Miill. Pissoa'l 
Eeturning back through Abbe\ille, and ascending the gently sloping ground on the 
east of the town, Moulin Quignon is shortly reached, where, at a height of 106 feet 
above the mean level of the sea at St. Valery, is a bed of gravel showing this section. 
Gravel -pit adjoining the Moulin Quignon, near Ahleville. 
ft. _ Fig. 3. 
a. Surface soil 1 
h. Brown sandy clay, gravel, and sharp flint frag- 
ments (partly removed) 2 
c. Yellow, ochreous, and ferruginous gravel of 
sub-angidar fragments of flints, and of flints 
but little broken — some of large size, a few 
Tertiary flint-pebbles, and some small sub- 
angular blocks of Tertiary sandstone (one, 
however, 2 feet long) ; the whole in a matrix 
of clay and sihceous sand of like colours, 
or greenish (c"), occasionally forming thin 
irregular beds by itself (c'). No shells-, 
flint-implements ; a few hones of ruminants and teeth of Elephas primigenitis . . .8 to 12 feet. 
Chalk. 
* A further examination of these specimens shows them to be so closely similar to such implements found 
in barrows and in peat beds, in association with admitted human works, that I am now disposed to believe 
in their artificial make (see fig. 7, Plate XIY.). The fliut-workers of Sulfolk produce this form of flint-flakes 
by a single sharp blow applied in a particular way to a lump of flint. A flake is thereby knocked off, whicli 
at the end which receives the blow shows a conchoidal protuberance at one side of the flat inner surface ; 
while the outer side presents two slightly inclined planes, with their obtuse angle replaced by a small facet. 
This is precisely the case in these fossil flakes. Such flakes always present, as mentioned by tlie learned 
author of the Descriptive Catalogue (p. 7), with reference to the flint-knives, cutters, or scrapers in the 
2 Q 2 
