Page:The Geologist, volume 5.djvu/175

Rh Better judging than many other workmen who daily make similar discoveries without informing any one of them, these of Montaigu at once carried the object found to Dr. Lejeune, the proprietor of the 'ash' quarry, whose house was close by. It could not have fallen into better Lands. At the first glance M. Lejeune saw that the ball was really of human workmanship, and he in his turn hastened to inform me of the circumstances of the discovery, no similar occurrence to which, as I have said, has happened within the memory of the workmen. However, long before this discovery, the workmen of the quarry had told me they had many times found pieces of wood changed into stone (the wood which is found in the lignites is nearly always, as we know, transformed into silex) bearing the marks of human work. I regret greatly now not having asked to see these, but I did not hitherto believe in the possibility of such a fact.

"I ought to add that no suspicion of deception can be entertained. The workmen who found the ball had never heard of M. Boucher de Perthes and his discoveries, nor of the high questions of archæology to which the presence of worked-flints deep in the earth have given rise. The ball of the 'ash-bed' of Montaigu carries also upon itself the mark of its own antiquity. It is easy to assure ourselves, on examining it with attention, that if it be permissible still to doubt whether its embedment dates back to the time when the bed was formed in which it was enclosed, it cannot be denied that its burial is ancient, and goes back to a period greatly remote from our own. The diameter of the ball is 6 centimetres, and it weighs 310 grammes, or about 10 ounces. It is of white chalk, and in this respect is distinguished from the stone-shot made use of for the artillery of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. These are constantly of sandstone or other hard and heavy rock. I have never seen one in chalk. Its form is imperfectly spherical, and its fracture unequal; it seems to have been fashioned with an instrument more blunt than cutting, from which one would suppose that the maker had only coarse and ineffectual tools. Three great splinters with sharp angles, announce also that it had remained during the working attached to the block of stone out of which it was made, and that it had been separated only after it was finished, by a blow, to which this kind of fracture is due.

"The workmen declare, as I have said, that the ball before falling to the ground was placed between the 'ash-bed' and the shell-bed which covered it. Its examination confirms in every way this assertion. It is really penetrated over four-fifths of its height by a black bituminous colour, that merges towards the top into a yellow circle, and which is evidently due to the contact of the lignite in which it had been for so long a time plunged. The upper part, which was in contact with the shell-bed, on the contrary has preserved its natural colour—the dull white of the chalk.

"I may add, that this last part gives with acids a lively effervescence, characteristic of carbonates of lime, whilst the rest of the surface which is impregnated with the bituminous matter alluded to, remains nearly insensible to the action of these acids. As to the rock in which it was found, I can affirm that it is perfectly virgin, and presents no trace whatever of any ancient exploitation. The roof of the quarry was equally intact in this place, and one could see there neither fissure nor any other cavity by which we might suppose this ball could have dropped down from above through all the series of beds which separate it from the surface of the plain.

"From what we have said, it remains then at least certain, that an object, a ball of chalk, fashioned by the hands of man, has been found in the