Page:Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man.djvu/120

102 accumulate, and so long as there was a regular current capable of carrying in fine mud and bones, no superficial crust of stalagmite. In some passages, as before stated, stalagmite was wanting, while in one place five alternations of stalagmite and sand were observed, seeming to indicate a prevalence of more rainy seasons, succeeded by others, when the water was for a time too low to flood the area where the calcareous incrustation accumulated.

If the regular sequence of the three deposits of pebbles, mud, and stalagmite was the result of the causes above explained, the order of superposition would be constant, yet we could not be sure that the gravel in one passage might not sometimes be coeval with the bone-earth or stalagmite in another.

If therefore the flint knives had not been very widely dispersed, and if one of them had not been at the bottom of the bone-earth, close to the leg of the bear above described, their antiquity relatively to the extinct mammalia might have been questioned. No coprolites were found in the Brixham excavations, and very few gnawed bones. These few may have been brought from some distance, before they reached their place of rest. Upon the whole, the same conclusion which Dr. Schmerling came to, respecting the filling up of the caverns near Liége, seems applicable to the caves of Brixham.

Dr. Falconer, after aiding in the investigations above alluded to near Torquay, stopped at Abbeville on his way to Sicily, in the autumn of 1858, and saw there the collection of M. Boucher de Perthes. Being at once satisfied that the flints called hatchets had really been fashioned by the hand of man, he urged Mr. Prestwich, by letter, thoroughly to explore the geology of the Valley of the Somme. This he accordingly accomplished, in company with Mr. John Evans, of the Society of Antiquaries, and, before his return that same year,