Page:Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man.djvu/137

Rh Somme, would himself be able to detect a single specimen. But few tools were lying on the surface. The rest have been exposed to view by the removal of such a volume of sand, clay, and gravel, that the price of the discovery of one of them could only be estimated by knowing how many hundred labourers have toiled at the fortifications of Abbeville, or in the sand and gravel pits near that city, and around Amiens, for road materials and other economical purposes, during the last twenty years.

In the gravel pits of St. Acheul, and in some others near Amiens, small round bodies, having a tubular cavity in the centre, occur. They are well known as fossils of the white chalk. Dr. Rigollot suggested that they might have been

strung together as beads, and he supposed the hole in the middle to have been artificial. Some of these round bodies are found entire in the chalk and in the gravel, others have naturally a hole passing through them, and sometimes one or two holes penetrating some way in from the surface, but not extending to the other side. Others, like b, fig. 15, have a large cavity, which has a very artificial aspect. It is impossible to decide whether they have or have not served as personal ornaments, recommended by their globular form, lightness, and by being less destructible than ordinary chalk. Granting that there were natural cavities in the axis of some of them, it does not follow that these may not have been taken advantage of for stringing them as beads, while others may have been artificially bored through. Dr. Rigollot's