Page:Archaeologia volume 38 part 2.djvu/66

294 primitive tribes by whom the more polished forms of stone weapons were fabricated, in what we have hitherto regarded as remote antiquity.

I come, therefore, to the important question, how is it proved that these implements are actually found in beds of really undisturbed clay, gravel, or sand, and have not been introduced or buried at some period subsequent to the formation of the inclosing beds? The evidence is of two kinds, direct and circumstantial; and this I will now examine, giving the direct evidence, as being the more valuable, precedence. We have then, in the first place, that of M. Boucher de Perthes, the original discoverer of this class of implements, who, through evil report and good report, has delivered his constant testimony to the fact of their being discovered, in nearly all cases, in undisturbed drift, and usually at a considerable depth below the surface. That some few may have been discovered in ground that has been moved, or near the surface, in no way militates against the fact that the majority of them have been found in undisturbed soil. It only shows, what might have been expected, that the soil containing these implements may have been moved without their having attracted sufficient attention for them to have been picked out from it, or, in cases where they have occasionally been found in other and more recent soils, that they had been at some time picked out from the gravel, sand, or clay, and afterwards thrown away. For M. Boucher de Perthes' detailed account of his discoveries, I must refer the reader to his work already cited.

Scattered through its pages are notices giving full particulars of the finding of numbers of the weapons, and in M. de Perthes' museum are innumerable specimens, with the nature of their matrix of soil and the depth at which they were found, (many of them under his own eyes,) marked upon them. Procès-verbaux of many of the discoveries were taken at the time, and some are printed in the volumes referred to. Nothing could be stronger than M. de Perthes' verbal assurances to Mr. Prestwich and myself of the finding of these implements in undisturbed gravels and sands, and occasionally clay, sometimes at depths of from twenty feet to thirty feet below the surface, and usually in beds at but a slight distance above the chalk. The testimony of other French geologists and antiquaries may also be adduced both as to the geological character of the beds and the fact of the flint implements being incorporated in them. M. Douchet, M.D., of Amiens, appears to have been the first discoverer of them at St. Acheul, and he addressed a memoir to the French Institute, expressing his firm conviction upon the subject. The printed testimony of M. de Massy and others is also brought forward by M. Boucher de Perthes, in the book above cited; but the most import-