Chapter 14

ENGLAND.

Flint Implements in ancient Alluvium of the Basin of the Seine. Bones of Man and of extinct Mammalia in the Cave of Arcy. Extinct Mammalia in the Valley of the Oise. Flint Implement in Gravel of same Valley. Works of Art in Pleistocene Drift in Valley of the Thames. Musk Ox. Meeting of northern and southern Fauna. Migrations of Quadrupeds. Mammals of Mongolia. Chronological Relation of the older Alluvium of the Thames to the Glacial Drift. Flint Implements of Pleistocene Period in Surrey, Middlesex, Kent, Bedfordshire, and Suffolk.

FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN PLEISTOCENE ALLUVIUM IN THE BASIN OF THE SEINE.

In the ancient alluvium of the valleys of the Seine and its principal tributaries, the same assemblage of fossil animals, which has been alluded to in the last chapter as characterising the gravel of Picardy, has long been known; but it was not till the year 1860, and when diligent search had been expressly made for them, that flint implements of the Amiens type were discovered in this part of France.

In the neighbourhood of Paris deposits of drift occur answering both to those of the higher and lower levels of the basin of the Somme before described.*

(* Prestwich, "Proceedings of the Royal Society" 1862.)

In both are found, mingled with the wreck of the Tertiary and Cretaceous rocks of the vicinity, a large quantity of granitic sand and pebbles, and occasionally large blocks of granite, from a few inches to a foot or more in diameter. These blocks are peculiarly abundant in the lower drift commonly called the "diluvium gris." The granitic materials are traceable to a chain of hills called the Morvan, where the head waters of the Yonne take their rise, 150 miles to the south-south-east of Paris.

It was in this lowest gravel that M. H.T. Gosse, of Geneva, found, in April 1860, in the suburbs of Paris, at La Motte Piquet, on the left bank of the Seine, one or two well-formed flint implements of the Amiens type, accompanied by a great number of ruder tools or attempts at tools. I visited the spot in 1861 with M. Hebert, and saw the stratum from which the worked flints had been extracted, 20 feet below the surface, and near the bottom of the "grey diluvium," a bed of gravel from which I have myself, in and near Paris, frequently collected the bones of the elephant, horse, and other mammalia.

More recently, M. Lartet has discovered at Clichy, in the environs of Paris, in the same lower gravel, a well-shaped flint implement of the Amiens type, together with remains both of Elephas primigenius and E. antiquus. No tools have yet been met with in any of the gravels occurring at the higher levels of the valley of the Seine; but no importance can be attached to this negative fact, as so little search has yet been made for them.

Mr. Prestwich has observed contortions indicative of ice-action, of the same kind as those near Amiens, in the higher-level drift of Charonne, near Paris; but as yet no similar derangement has been seen in the lower gravels--a fact, so far as it goes, in unison with the phenomena observed in Picardy.

In the cavern of Arcy-sur-Yonne a series of deposits have lately been investigated by the Marquis de Vibraye, who discovered human bones in the lowest of them, mixed with remains of quadrupeds of extinct and recent species. This cavern occurs in Jurassic limestone, at a slight elevation above the Cure, a small tributary of the Yonne, which last joins the Seine near Fontainebleau about 40 miles south of Paris. The lowest formation in the cavern resembles the "diluvium gris" of Paris, being composed of granitic materials, and like it derived chiefly from the waste of the crystalline rocks of the Morvan. In it have been found the two branches of a human lower jaw with teeth well-preserved, and the bones of the Elephas primigenius, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, Ursus spelaeus, Hyaena spelaea, and Cervus tarandus, all specifically determined by M. Lartet. I have been shown this collection of fossils by M. de Vibraye, and remarked that the human and other remains were in the same condition and of the same colour.

Above the grey gravel is a bed of red alluvium, made up of fragments of Jurassic limestone, in a red argillaceous matrix, in which were embedded several flint knives, with bones of the reindeer and horse, but no extinct mammalia. Over this, in a higher bed of alluvium, were several polished hatchets of the more modern type called "celts," and above all loam or cave-mud, in which were Gallo-Roman antiquities.*

(* "Bulletin de la Societe Geologique de France" 1860.)

The French geologists have made as yet too little progress in identifying the age of the successive deposits of ancient alluvium of various parts of the basin of the Seine, to enable us to speculate with confidence as to the coincidence in date of the granitic gravel with human bones of the Grotte d'Arcy and the stone-hatchets buried in "grey diluvium" of La Motte Piquet, before mentioned; but as the associated extinct mammalia are of the same species in both localities, I feel strongly inclined to believe that the stone hatchets found by M. Gosse at Paris, and the human bones discovered by M. de Vibraye, may be referable to the same period.

VALLEY OF THE OISE.

A flint hatchet, of the old Abbeville and Amiens type, was found lately by M. Peigne Delacourt at Precy, near Creil, 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 Pleistocene 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 Abbe 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 reindeer, horse, and the musk ox (Bubalus moschatus). The latter seems never to have been seen before in the old alluvium of France.*

(* Lartet, "Annales des Sciences Naturelles Zoologiques" tome 15 page 224.)

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 Precy 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.

The alluvium of the Seine and its tributaries, like that of the Somme, contains no fragments of rocks brought from any other hydrographical basin; yet the shape of the land, or fall of the river, or the climate, or all these conditions, must have been very different when the grey alluvium in which the flint tools occur at Paris was formed. The great size of some of the blocks of granite, and the distance which they have travelled, imply a power in the river which it no longer possesses. We can hardly doubt that river-ice once played a much more active part than now in the transportation of such blocks, one of which may be seen in the Museum of the Ecole des Mines at Paris, 3 or 4 feet in diameter.

PLEISTOCENE ALLUVIUM OF ENGLAND, CONTAINING WORKS OF ART.

In the ancient alluvium of the basin of the Thames, at moderate heights above the main river and its tributaries, we find fossil bones of the same species of extinct and living mammalia, accompanied by recent species of land and freshwater shells, as we have shown to be characteristic of the basins of the Somme and the Seine. We can scarcely therefore doubt that these quadrupeds, during some part of the Pleistocene period, ranged freely from the continent of Europe to England, at a time when there was an uninterrupted communication by land between the two countries. The reader will not therefore be surprised to learn that flint implements of the same antique type as those of the valley of the Somme have been detected in British alluvium.

The most marked feature of this alluvium in the Thames valley is that great bed of ochreous gravel, composed chiefly of broken and slightly worn Chalk flints, on which a great part of London is built. It extends from above Maidenhead through the metropolis to the sea, a distance from west to east of 50 miles, having a width varying from 2 to 9 miles. Its thickness ranges commonly from 5 to 15 feet.*

(* Prestwich, "Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society"