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the reader's mind on that point, before inviting him to study the details of sections of successive beds of mud, sand, and gravel, which vary considerably even in contiguous localities.
Since the spring of 1859, I have paid three visits to the Valley of the Somme, and examined all the principal localities of these flint tools. In my excursions around Abbeville, I was accompanied by M. Boucher de Perthes, and during one of my explorations in the Amiens district, by Mr. Prestwitch. The first time I entered the pits at St. Acheul, I obtained seventy flint instruments, all of them collected from the drift in the course of the preceding five or six weeks. The two prevailing forms of these tools are represented in the annexed Figures 8 and 9, each of which are half the size of the originals; the first being the spear-headed form, varying in length from six to eight inches; the second, the oval form, which is not unlike some stone implements, used to this day as hatchets and tomahawks by natives of Australia, but with this difference, that the edge in the Australian weapons (as in the case of those called celts in Europe) has been produced by friction, whereas the cutting edge in the old tools of the valley of the Somme was always gained by the simple fracture of the flint, and by the repetition of many dexterous blows.
The oval-shaped Australian weapons, however, differ in being sharpened at one end only. The other, though reduced by fracture to the same general form, is left rough, in which state it is fixed into a cleft stick, which serves as a handle. To this it is firmly bound by thin straps of opossum's hide. One of these tools, now in my possession, was given me by Mr. Farquharson of Haughton, who saw a native using it in 1854 on the Auburn river, in Burnet district, North Australia.
Out of more than a hundred flint implements which I obtained at St. Acheul, not a few had their edges more or less fractured or worn, either by use as instruments before they were buried in gravel, or by being rolled in the river's bed.
Some of these tools were probably used as weapons, both of war and of the chase, others to grub up roots, cut down trees, and scoop out canoes. Some of them may have served, as Mr. Prestwich has suggested, for cutting holes in the ice both for fishing and for obtaining water, as will be explained in the eighth chapter when we consider the arguments in favour of the higher level drift having belonged to a period when the rivers were frozen over for several months every winter.
(FIGURE 8. FLINT IMPLEMENT FROM ST. ACHEUL, NEAR AMIENS, OF THE SPEAR-HEAD SHAPE (half the size of the original, which is 7 1/2 inches long).
a. Side view. b. Same seen edgewise.
These spear-headed implements have been found in greater number, proportionally to the oval ones, in the upper level gravel at St. Acheul, than in any of the lower gravels in the valley of the Somme. In these last the oval form predominates, especially at Abbeville.)
When the natural form of a Chalk-flint presented a suitable handle at one end, as in the specimen, Figure 10, that part was left as found. The portion, for example, between b and c has probably not been altered; the protuberances which are fractured having been broken off by river action before the flint was chipped artificially. The other extremity, a, has been worked till it acquired a proper shape and cutting edge.
(FIGURES 9 AND 10. FLINT IMPLEMENTS FROM THE PLEISTOCENE DRIFT OF ABBEVILLE AND AMIENS.
FIGURE 9. a. OVAL-SHAPED FLINT HATCHET FROM MAUTORT, NEAR ABBEVILLE,