Page:Archaeologia volume 38 part 2.djvu/54

284 The most notable places in the neighbourhood of Abbeville, where the gravel has been extensively excavated, are at the spot where is now the Champ de Mars, the pit near the Moulin Quignon, and that near the Porte St. Gilles; but the beds of gravel are spread over a large area, and are said to be continuous from the Moulin Quignon on the south-east of the town, and about ninety feet above the level of the river Somme, to the suburb of Menchecourt on the north-west of Abbeville, where the beds assume a much more arenaceous character, and where sand has been dug in immense quantities at a level but little more than twenty feet above that of the Somme.

At St. Roch, a suburb of Amiens, the deposit is also at a low level, like that at Menchecourt, and at both places large quantities of teeth and bones of the Elephas primigenius, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, and other extinct animals, have been found.

In another locality, on the opposite side of Amiens to St. Roch, at the pits near the seminary of St. Acheul, the drift occurs at a higher level, viz. about ninety feet above the river Somme at that part of its course, or about one hundred and sixty feet above the sea. The depth of the beds, which consist of brick earth, sand, and gravel, arranged in layers of variable thickness, but with some approach to stratification, is here from twenty to twenty-five feet.

The following section was taken by Mr. Prestwich, showing the beds in their descending order:—