Page:Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man.djvu/122

104 fallen from the matrix. I expressed my opinion in favour of the antiquity of the flint tools to the meeting of the British Association at Aberdeen, in the same year. On my way through Rouen, I stated my convictions on this subject to Mr. George Pouchet, who immediately betook himself to St. Acheul, commissioned by the municipality of Rouen, and did not quit the pits till he had seen one of the hatchets extracted from gravel in its natural position. M. Gaudry also gave the following account of his researches in the same year to the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris. 'The great point was not to leave the workmen for a single instant, and to satisfy oneself by actual inspection, whether the hatchets were found in situ. I caused a deep excavation to be made, and found nine hatchets, most distinctly in situ in the diluvium, associated with teeth of Equus fossilis and a species of Bos, different from any now living, and similar to that of the diluvium and of caverns.' In 1859, M. Hébert, an original observer of the highest authority, declared to the Geological Society of France that he had, in 1854, or four years before Mr. Prestwich's visit to St. Acheul, seen the sections at Abbeville and Amiens, and had come to the opinion that the hatchets were imbedded in the 'lower diluvium,' and that their origin was as ancient as that of the mammoth and the rhinoceros. M. Desnoyers also made excavations after M. Gaudry, at St. Acheul, in 1859, with the same results.

After a lively discussion on the subject in England and France, it was remembered, not only that there were numerous recorded cases leading to similar conclusions in regard to cavern deposits, but, also, that Mr. Frere had, so long ago as