260 
ME. PEESTWICH ON THE GEOLOGY OF THE DEPOSITS 
The same features are repeated on a smaller scale in some of the lateral valleys. 
Near Amiens, for example, in the tributary valley of the Arve at Boves, four miles from 
its junction with the Somme, are large beds of gravel like those of St. Koch, abutting 
against the side of the chalk hills on the right bank of the stream. Bemains of the 
Elephas primigenius, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, Horse, and Deer have been found there, 
together, it is reported, with a few flint implements. 
At Abbeville the Escardon joins the Somme. At Oneux, eight miles up the valley of 
this tributary, a bed of flint gravel was formerly worked, in which, it is said, mammalian 
remains and flint implements were met with ; whilst at Drucat, on another branch of 
this stream, a singular isolated patch of gravel has been found high up on the hills, at 
an elevation of about 100 feet above the valley, and 150 feet above the Somme at Ab- 
beville. The sand and gravel are of great thickness, owing to their being in a depres- 
sion of the chalk, from which they further descend in huge cylindrical holes or pipes to 
a depth of more than 100 feet. On the top of the light-coloured sands and gravels are 
other beds of reddish gravel and thin brick-earth. In M. Boucher de Perthes’s collec- 
tion there are two flint implements which are said to have come from these upper beds. 
The Valley of the Seine. — Another important discovery of flint implements was made 
early in 1860, in the valley of the Seine at Paris, by M. Gosse * * * § . The specimens are 
ruder and less abundant than those of the Somme valley. They were found in the 
pits of the Allee de la Motte Piquet f, near the Ecole Militaire, at a depth of 16 feet 
in a gravel composed chiefly of subangular tertiary and cretaceous debris about 20 feet 
thick, roughly bedded, and containing remains of extinct mammalia. No shells are 
recorded. Large blocks of Meuliere , little worn, are dispersed through the gravel. At 
this spot, the height of which above the Seine is 36 feet, the relation of the beds to any 
of the “ higher-level ” quaternary deposits of the neighbourhood of Paris is not seen, 
but at the Gare d’lvry, on the other side of Paris, and at a similar level with regard to 
the river, the same bed of gravel, only more sandy and containing more large granite 
boulders, is again largely worked. It here abuts against the calcaire grossier, which 
forms, immediately behind, the heights of Gentilly, where these tertiary strata come 
to the surface and are extensively quarried. Following the plain in a direction at 
right angles to the river, some coarse gravels of moderate thickness set in, and are 
worked near the Barriere de Vitry, at a height of about 130 feet above the Seine. 
Further on a cutting, on the side of the road leading from the Barriere d’ltalie to 
Gentilly, exposes a section described in 1840 by M. Duval $ and singularly like that 
at St. Acheul§. The lower bed is a white sandy gravel of subangular chalk flints 
* Comptes Rendus, 1860, vol. 1. p. 812. 
t M. Boucher de Perthes had in 1847 expressed an opinion that flint implements would be found in these 
pits : ‘Antiquites Celtiques et Antediluviennes,’ vol. ii. pp. 123, 494, and 501. 
+ Bull, de la Soc. Geol. vol. xi. p. 302, and vol. xiii. p. 297. 
§ It is, however, not improbable that the deposits both of Gentilly and Charonne may be older than that of 
St. Aeheul, although belonging to the series of the high-level valley-gravels. 
