Page:Archaeologia volume 38 part 2.djvu/80

306 formed, far more so of the period of their formation. The clays, the sands, and the gravels, all appear to be such as would be formed by the action of a river occasionally in rapid motion, and then again dammed up so as to form as it were a lake, or series of lakes.

But that this could not have been effected in the present configuration of the valley of the Somme, or of the country near Hoxne, is apparent. There must indeed have been a considerable difference in the land-surface at those places, at some former time, for it to have been possible for such deposits to have been formed; but what the configuration was at the time of their formation, and how long a period must have elapsed for it to have become changed into what it is at present, are questions for the geologist rather than the antiquary, and even he would require more facts than are at present at his command to speak with confidence on these points.

Thus much appears to be established beyond a doubt; that in a period of antiquity, remote beyond any of which we have hitherto found traces, this portion of the globe was peopled by man; and that mankind has here witnessed some of those geological changes by which these so-called diluvial beds were deposited. Whether they were the result of some violent rush of waters such as may have taken place when "the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened," or whether of a more gradual action, similar in character to some of those now in operation along the course of our brooks, streams, and rivers, may be matter of dispute. Under any circumstances this great fact remains indisputable, that at Amiens land which is now one hundred and sixty feet above the sea, and ninety feet above the Somme, has since the existence of man been submerged under fresh water, and an aqueous deposit from twenty to thirty feet in thickness, a portion of which at all events must have subsided from tranquil water, has been formed upon it; and this too has taken place in a country the level of which is now stationary, and the face of which has been but little altered since the days when the Gauls and the Romans constructed their sepulchres in the soil overlying the drift which contains these relics of a far earlier race of men.

How great was the lapse of time that separated the primeval race whose relics are here found fossilized, from the earliest occupants of the country to whom history or tradition can point, I will not stay longer to speculate upon. My present object is to induce those who have an opportunity of examining beds of drift in which mammalian remains have been found, to do so with a view of finding also flint implements in them "shaped by art and man's device."