PRE-MOUSTERIAN MAN 197 
in charge of the customs-house at Abbeville, had made 
a great discovery — one which revealed an ancient and 
unsuspected chapter of human history. Falconer was 
one of a remarkable group of British scientists, embrac- 
ing Sir Charles Lyell, George Busk, who brought the 
Ctbraltar skull to England, Joseph Prestwich, a wine 
merchant and geologist, John Evans, a paper manufacturer 
and antiquarian, and John Lubbock, banker, naturalist, 
and anthropologist. Falconer prevailed on his friends 
to visit Abbeville. The result was that this brilliant 
school of geologists became convinced that Boucher de 
Perthes' discovery was right — the implements were of 
human workmanship, and that man had lived when the 
100-foot terrace was being formed. 
In 1863 another famous discovery by Boucher de 
Perthes brought the English geologists back to Abbeville. 
The discovery was made in the Moulin Quignon pit 
in the 100-foot terrace at Abbeville, a few hundred 
yards to the east of the Carpentier pit (fig. 66), so 
thoroughly investigated by Commont. 
The^Moulin Quignon pit, like others along the valley 
of the Somme, had yielded a rich harvest of Palaeolithic 
implements — both Acheulean and Chellean types — to 
Boucher de Perthes, but not a trace of the man who 
fashioned them, although liberal rewards were held out 
to the workmen in the pits. On March 23rd, 1863, the 
long-expected discovery was made ; on that day Boucher 
de Perthes removed with his own hand a human jaw 
from the lower gravels of the Moulin Quignon pit. 
The mandible lay ^ in a well-known, particularly black 
stratum of sand and gravel which contained many flints 
of the Acheulean type — " coup-de-poing," or " hand-axes," 
as they were then called. The black stratum was 5 m. 
(i6i feet) below the surface of the pit, almost on the 
chalk. The section of the Carpentier pit (fig. 66) shows 
how the upper or third series of deposits may dip down 
almost to the chalk, as they evidently did at Moulin 
1 For a full account of the discovery of, and conference on, the Moulin 
Quignon jaw, see Natural History Review, 1863, vol. iii. p. 423. 
