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"Subsequent investigation by experienced geologists has somewhat modified the ideas here expressed. Professor J. S. Henslow, after minute observations, comes to the conclusion that no one can doubt the evidence to be in favor of a cataclysmic action, and rapid deposition of the lower and larger portion of the gravel at the spot near St. Acheul, where the hatchets occur.' Neither does he suppose that the facts witnessed by him indicate, of necessity, that the bones of extinct mammals, found alongside of the flint implements, were contemporary with the unskilled workmen by whom these were wrought; or that the evidence carries man altogether out of the range of human history. The fossil bones and the human implements are mingled in a gravel formed as a re-disposition by fresh water agency out of older materials, probably belonging to very different periods, though the most modern of them undoubtedly pertain to a period long prior to the oldest dates of Gaulish history."- Athenæum, Oct. 20, 1869, p. 516.

M. Elie de Beaumont, the distinguished French savant, concurs in this view. At a meeting of a special commission of naturalists and geologists, French and English, called to examine a human tooth and jaw found in the flint beds at Moulin Quignon, near Abbeville, M. Beaumont "made a statement so positive and so unexpected as, to judge by the contemporary reports, produced an unusual and almost electric sensation on the scientific audi

tory. His opinion, or decision, was to this effect that the Moulin Quignon beds are not diluvium they are not even alluvia, deposited by the en croachments of rivers on their banks, but are sim ply composed of washed soil deposited on the flanks of the valley by excessive falls of rain, such as may be supposed to have occurred exceptionally once or twice in a thousand years. A week later, this geologist reiterated his opinion to the same illustrious assembly, adding that the age of this formation belongs, in his opinion, to the stone period, or is analogous to that of the peat mosses, and the Swiss lake habitations." Edinb. Rev., July, 1863, p. 138.

Enough, then, I trust, has been said to show that the facts presented us by the Somme valley do not bear out the conclusions derived from them in regard to the remote antiquity of man on earth. Neither the data themselves, nor the reasoning employed, are to be accepted without question. We dismiss the case, therefore, by citing the following judicious and weighty language of Professor Rogers:

"To the interrogation, How far are we entitled to attribute a high antiquity to these earliest physical records of mankind, from the nature of the containing and overlying sedimentary deposits?

my response again is, that as the two schools of geologists now named differ widely in their translation of geologic time of all phenomena of the kind here described, this question does not admit, in the present state of the science, of a specific or quantitative answer.

"In conclusion, then, of the whole inquiry, condensing into one expression my answer to the general question whether a remote pre-historic antiquity for the human race has been established from the recent discovery of specimens of man's handiwork in the so-called Diluvium, I maintain that it is not proven, - by no means asserting that it can be disproved, but insisting simply that it remains Not Proven."- Blackw. Mag., Oct., 1860, P. 438.

The valley of the Somme is confessedly the most important locality in which human relics have been found indicative of a high human antiquity. I shall not, therefore, go into an examination of other similar localities in France, Sicily, and elsewhere, nor of the "bone caverns" in England, Belgium, etc. To the evidence they furnish, the same arguments apply as those which have now been advanced; indeed, the matured opinions of Professor Rogers and others, which we have cited, were professedly given in view of all the facts presented by them.

6. There is another class of facts which is often adduced for the same purpose as the preceding, derived from extensive human remains found in peat beds, in shell mounds, or ancient rubbish heaps, and in the lakes of Switzerland, and other parts of Europe.

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These peat beds in the Danish islands are from ten to thirty feet deep, and contain trunks of firs, oaks, and birches, of great size, and of species not now growing in that country. There are found in them flint, bronze, and iron implements, with the bones of man and the various domestic animals. The refuse mounds consist mostly of collections of oyster and clam shells, mingled with bones of quadrupeds, birds, and fish, flint knives, hatchets, and arrows, fragments of pottery, etc. They are called by the Danes kjökken-mödding, i. e., kitchen refuse heaps, composed as they are so largely of the remains of animals used for food. The relics found in the lakes indicate the former existence of villages built upon piles in the shallow

waters.

All these traces of man prove the existence of tribes of a pre-historic people inhabiting the greater part of Europe, the memorials of which are otherwise lost in remote antiquity. A careful study of these remains has led investigators to divide them

into three classes, according to the periods in which they are supposed to have lived, called respectively the stone, the bronze, and the iron age, from the materials and workmanship of the implements then in use.

The question with which we are now interested relates to the time when these primitive people existed. Sir Charles Lyell, after summing up the evidence on this point, and showing that the three ages were of very unequal antiquity, pronounces all the calculations hitherto made by archæologists and geologists of merit respecting it, "as being tentative," and "a rough approximation to the truth." He adds, "They have led to the assignment of 4000 and 7000 years before our time as the lowest antiquity which can be ascribed to certain events and monuments; but much collateral evidence will be required to confirm these estimates, and to decide whether the number of centuries has been under or over rated." Geol. Evid., p. 273.

M. Frederic Troyon, in his work entitled "Habitations Lacustres des Temps Anciens et Modernes," takes care to say, near the commencement of the volume, "To avoid all mistake, it is well to be understood that the stone age [the oldest of all], of which we find remains in the lakes and tombs, is

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