chemical action. If these implements had been deposited among the beds of gravel, sand, or clay at some later period than the other flints adjacent to them, it might be expected that some difference in colour would testify to their more recent introduction; but in all cases, as far as I was able to ascertain, these worked flints were discoloured in precisely the same way as the rough flints in the same positions. Among the more ochreous beds they are stained of a reddish brown tint to some depth below their surface; in the clay they have undergone some change of condition, and have become white and in appearance like porcelain; while those which have been imbedded in the calcareous sands have remained nearly unaltered in colour.
This evidence, like that of the calcareous coating, is of value in two ways, both as proving the length of time that the implements must have been imbedded in the matrix, and also as corroborating the assertions of the workmen with regard to their positions when found. Some few of the implements present a more or less rubbed and water-worn appearance; a more convincing proof than this, of these flint implements having been deposited where found by the drifting action of water, can hardly be conceived. Apart from this, the chain of evidence adduced must I think be sufficient to convince others, as I confess it did me, that the conclusions at which Mons. de Perthes had arrived upon this subject were correct, and that these worked flints were as much original component parts of the gravel, as any of the other stones of which it consists.[1]
But how much more fully was this conviction brought home to my mind, when on my return to England I found that discoveries of precisely similar weapons and implements had been made under precisely similar circumstances in this country, and placed on record upwards of sixty years ago.
In the 13th Volume of the Archæologia, p. 204, is an account of Flint Weapons discovered at Hoxne in Suffolk, communicated by John Frere, Esq., F.R.S. and F.S.A., read June 22, 1797, and illustrated by two Plates showing two of the
- ↑ Since the reading of this paper, Amiens and Abbeville have been visited by many geologists of note, and, among others, by Sir Charles Lyell, who, in his address to the Geological Section of the British Association, at their meeting in 1859 at Aberdeen, expressed himself as fully prepared to corroborate the observations of Mr. Prestwich. M. Gaudry, and M. Pouchet, of Rouen, on the part of the French Académie des Sciences, and the town of Rouen, have also made researches at Amiens, and have both been successful in discovering specimens of the implements in trenches made under their own personal superintendence.—(Comptes Rendus, tom. 49, No. 18, and Report of M. Pouchet.) See also the Address of Lord Wrottesley to the British Association, at Oxford, in 1860. Some few other facts that have come to my knowledge since this paper was read have been incorporated in the text.
