424 
ORIGINAL ARTICLES. 
in the illustration of Paley, have turned up in surprising abundance 
in tbe old gravel-beds of Amiens and Abbeville, but hitherto not a 
vestige of the bones of the men who shaped them into form. Why 
it should be so has remained a mystery, for human bones are as 
enduring as those of deer, horse, sheep, or oxen, and fossil bones of 
extinct animals are not unfrequent in the Somme Valley deposits. 
At last it was thought that the objects so long sought for in vain had 
been discovered. To pass over minor incidents. On the 23rd of March, 
a terrcissier brought to M. de Perthes, from the bottom of the 
gravel-pit of Moulin-Quignon, two flint hdches and a fragment of 
bone, which, on detaching the dark matrix enveloping it, he found to 
be a human tooth. On the 28th of March, M. de Perthes was 
summoned to the same gravel-pit (described by Mr. Prestwich in his 
memoir in the Philosophical Transactions) to examine, in situ , what 
appeared to be a portion of bone projecting from the section, close 
to its base. The specimen was carefully detached with his own 
hands by M. de Perthes, and proved to be the entire half of an adult 
human lower jaw, quite perfect, and containing one back tooth— 
namely, the penultimate, or last but one. The sockets of the other 
teeth were all present, and filled with matrix, with the exception of 
the antepenultimate, the socket of which was effaced, the tooth 
having been lost during life. The solitary molar present was hollow 
from caries , and this hollow was also filled with the matrix. 
The deposit from which the jaw was extracted is the “ black seam 
flinty gravel,” so called from its intensely dark (blueish-black) colour, 
arising from oxides of iron and manganese. It rests immediately 
upon the chalk, and belongs to what Mr. Prestwich calls the “ high 
level” series, being the oldest of the Somme Valley beds. A thin 
layer of black mangano-ferruginous clayey matter is interposed be¬ 
tween the chalk and the gravel. If the jaw proved to be an authentic 
fossil, and came out of the alleged position, it indicated the existence 
of man, by an actual bone, at a period of extremely remote antiquity. 
A single detached human molar was found at the same time, 
corresponding exactly in appearance and in the matrix with which 
it was covered; and, to complete the case, a flint hatchet, covered 
with black matrix, was extracted from the same spot by M. Oswald 
Dimpre, who accompanied M. de Perthes. The details are all given 
by M. de Perthes in the Abbevillois of the 9th of April, 1863, and 
in his note communicated to the Academy of Sciences on the 20th of 
April which is here subjoined. 
Mr. Prestwich, Mr. Evans, and Dr. Ealconer were in Prance at 
the time, and hearing of the asserted discovery, they determined to 
visit Abbeville. The two former proceeded there on the 13th of 
April, when their suspicions were instantly aroused. They pronounced 
the hdches said to have been yielded by the ‘ couche noired to be 
modern fabrications. Dr. Falconer followed a day later, when they 
had left, and also got several hdches from the “ black-seam gravel,” 
which, upon closely examining them on his return to London, he 
