Page:Archaeologia volume 38 part 2.djvu/68

296 Mr. Prestwich, in company with some other geologists, has revisited Amiens, and that one of the party, Mr. J. W. Flower, uncovered and exhumed with his own hands a most perfectly worked instrument of the lance-head form, at a depth of twenty feet from the surface. The party brought away, as the result of their one day's visit, upwards of thirty of the implements, which had been collected by the workmen. From the manner in which these pits are worked, there is always a "head," or "face," of earth, which shows an excellent section of the soil; and any places where at any former time pits have been sunk or excavations made, (as, for instance, in the ancient cemetery of St. Acheul,) are, owing to the rough stratification of the beds, readily discovered. The workmen in the pits, both at Amiens and Abbeville, gave concurrent testimony of the usually undisturbed nature of the soil, and to the fact of the flint implements being generally found in the lower part of the beds, where also the fossil bones and teeth are principally discovered.

It may be observed that in the beds of brick-earth and sand overlying the gravel at St. Acheul are numerous freshwater shells, some of them of so fragile a character that they must have been destroyed had the soil at any time been moved.

The fossil bones are of comparatively rare occurrence in the gravel pits, but the number of the flint implements that has been found is almost beyond belief. Dr. Rigollot states that in the pits of St. Acheul, between August and December 1854, above four hundred specimens were obtained; and now, whenever the gravel is being extensively dug, hardly a day passes without one or two being found. This very abundance, for which however it is difficult to account, affords a secondary proof of the undisturbed nature of the drift; for how could such numbers of flint weapons have been introduced at any period subsequent to the formation of the drift, and yet leave no evident traces of the manner in which they were buried? They appear, too, to be detached and scattered through the mass of gravel, with no indications of their having been buried there with any design, but rather as if their positions were the result of the merest accident. Another remarkable piece of circumstantial evidence, is the discovery of implements and weapons of similar form under precisely similar circumstances, but by different persons, at Abbeville and Amiens, some thirty miles apart; though the discoveries are not limited to these two spots, but have also been subsequently made in various localities in that district, where there have been excavations in the drift. It is, however, only in