Page:Early Man in Britain and His Place in the Tertiary Period.djvu/161

] this variety of fig-tree and the Judas-tree formed part of the forests, are represented by the remains found at St. Prest, near Chartres, proving that the banks of the Eure were haunted by the horse, the southern elephant (E. meridionalis), the Etruskan rhinoceros (R. etruscus), a large extinct deer (Cervus carnutorum), and the large extinct beaver (Trogontherium). All these are found, as we have already seen, in the Forest-bed of Norfolk.

In 1863 certain cut bones, discovered in the deposit of St. Prest above mentioned, were considered by M. J. Desnoyers to be the work of man, and to imply his presence during the time of the deposit of the fluviatile strata in which they were buried. Some of these marks have been shown experimentally by Sir Charles Lyell to be capable of production by the gnawing of rodents, while others appear to Sir John Lubbock "to be probably of human origin." Their artificial character is accepted by most of the French archaeologists, and supported by the discovery of flints worked by the hand of man, by the Abbé Bourgeois. Unfortunately, however, there is some doubt as to the precise stratum in which these were found. On the whole, it is more prudent to follow Sir John Lubbock in putting this evidence to a "suspense account," rather than to take it to show that man was living in the early Pleistocene age. We will therefore