Page:Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man.djvu/121

Rh succeeded in dissipating all doubts from the minds of his geological friends by extracting, with his own hands, from a bed of undisturbed gravel, at St. Acheul, a well-shaped flint hatchet. This implement was buried in the gravel at a depth of seventeen feet from the surface, and was lying on its flat side. There were no signs of vertical rents in the enveloping matrix, nor in the overlying beds of sand and loam, in which were many land and fresh-water shells; so that it was impossible, to imagine that the tool had gradually worked its way downwards, as some had suggested, through the incumbent soil, into an older formation.

There was no one in England whose authority deserved to have more weight in overcoming incredulity in regard to the antiquity of the implements in question than that of Mr. Prestwich, since, besides having published a series of important memoirs on the tertiary formations of Europe, he had devoted many years specially to the study of the drift and its organic remains. His report, therefore, to the Royal Society, accompanied by a photograph showing the position of the flint tool in situ before it was removed from its matrix, not only satisfied many inquirers, but induced others to visit Abbeville and Amiens; and one of these, Mr. Flower, who accompanied Mr. Prestwich on his second excursion to St. Acheul, in June 1859, succeeded, by digging into the bank of gravel, in disinterring, at the depth of twenty-two feet from the surface, a fine, symmetrically shaped weapon of an oval form, lying in and beneath strata which were observed by many witnesses to be perfectly undisturbed.

Shortly afterwards, in the year 1859, I visited the same pits, and obtained seventy flint tools, one of which was taken out while I was present, though I did not see it before it had