Page:Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man.djvu/171

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A flint hatchet, of the old Abbeville and Amiens type, was found lately by M. Peigné Delacourt at Précy near Criel, on the Oise, in gravel, resembling, in its geological position, the lower-level gravels of Montiers near Amiens, already described. I visited these extensive gravel-pits in 1861, in company with Mr. Prestwich; but we remained there too short a time to entitle us to expect to find a flint implement, even if they had been as abundant as at St. Acheul.

In 1859, I examined, in a higher part of the same valley of the Oise, near Chauny and Noyon, some fine railway cuttings, which passed continuously through alluvium of the post-pliocene period for half a mile. All this alluvium was evidently of fluviatile origin, for, in the interstices between the pebbles, the Ancylus fluviatilis and other freshwater shells were abundant. My companion, the Abbé E. Lambert, had collected from the gravel a great many fossil bones, among which M. Lartet has recognised both Elephas primigenius and E. antiquus, besides a species of hippopotamus (H. major?), also the rein-deer, horse, and the musk buffalo (Bubalus moschatus). The latter seems never to have been seen before in the old alluvium of France. Over the gravel above mentioned, near Chauny, are seen dense masses of loam like the loess of the Rhine, containing shells of the genera Helix and Succinea. We may suppose that the gravel containing the flint hatchet at Précy is of the same age as that of Chauny, with which it is continuous, and that both of them are coeval with the tool-bearing beds of Amiens, for the basins of the Oise and the Somme are only separated by a narrow water-shed, and the same fossil quadrupeds occur in both.