196 THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN 
river valleys of the adjoining parts of France and 
England occur the same sequence of terraces, deposits, 
and cultures. 
The investigations of M. Commont belong to the 
commencement of the twentieth century. Seventy years 
before his time even more remarkable discoveries were 
made at Abbeville. In 1825, M. Boucher de Perthes, 
then a man of forty-one, was placed in charge of the 
customs of the town. In the years following the date 
of his appointment, cave exploration was attracting the 
attention of antiquaries. It was in 1833 that Schmerling 
published the results of his investigations at Engis. 
No one had ever looked, or even thought of looking, 
in the gravel deposits of valley terraces for human 
implements until Boucher de Perthes took up his abode 
in the Somme valley. The terraces were known to 
contain the remains of extinct animals, and their formation 
was supposed to predate man's appearance. About the 
year 1832 this antiquarian exciseman first noticed very 
curiously shaped stones in the gravel pits. These stones, 
we now know, represented human implements of the 
Acheulean type. We are not surprised that he recognised 
in those stones the work of man's hand and of man's 
brain, but we have a difficulty in understanding why 
those to whom he showed them did not agree with him. 
Even in 1 847, when he had published the first part of 
his great work, Antiquites Celtiques et Antediluviennes^ he 
had not gained a single convert. Indeed, his discovery 
was regarded in the light of a joke. In 1858 the public 
attitude towards Boucher de Perthes' work began to 
change, and in that change Dr Hugh Falconer, whom we 
have come across before as explorer of the Brixham cave, 
gave a helping hand. He had in his younger days made 
known the extinct animals found in' the Siwalik forma- 
tions in India, and in 1858 was searching the caves on 
the shores and islands of the Mediterranean for fossil 
animals. On his way to the caves he had the good 
fortune to call at Abbeville and to meet Boucher de 
Perthes. He realised at once that this local antiquarian. 
