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Among the formations alluded to, the Thanet Sands of Prestwich have been sufficiently described in the last chapter, and classed as Lower Eocene. To the same tertiary series belong the Belgian formations, called by Professor Dumont, Landenian.
Prestwich about the proofs of the antiquity of the human race yielded by the Broxham Cave, in which he took a lively interest; and I engaged to communicate to him the opinions at which I should arrive, after my examination of the Abbeville collection.
Prestwich, in his admirable Memoirs on the eocene deposits of England and France, is able to draw a close general parallelism between the successive stages in the two countries; but when he compares certain stages in England with those in France, although he finds in both a curious accordance in the numbers of the species belonging to the same genera, yet the species themselves differ in a manner very difficult to account for, considering the proximity of the two areas, unless, indeed, it be assumed that an isthmus separated two seas inhabited by distinct, but contemporaneous, faunas.
The indefatigable labors of Prestwich, in the basin of the Somme and among the gravel-beds of Picardy, first called the attention of geologists to the fact that works of men's hands were also found in undisturbed alluvial deposits of high antiquity, and he had the honor of bringing to light proofs of the existence of man in Europe in more remote times than had been previously admitted, and of demonstrating the stone age of France.
Between these two places a small tributary stream, called the Celle, joins the Somme. In the gravel at Montiers, Mr. Prestwich and I found some flint knives, one of them flat on one side, but the other carefully worked, and exhibiting many fractures, clearly produced by blows skilfully applied.
Prestwich, besides having published a series of important memoirs on the Tertiary formations of Europe, had devoted many years specially to the study of the drift and its organic remains.
Prestwich has contended,* that the glacial formation is the older of the two. Having offered these general remarks on the alluvium of the Thames, I may now say something of the implements hitherto discovered in it. In a letter dated 1715, printed in Herne's edition of "Leland's Collectanea," volume 1 page 73, it is stated to have been found in the presence of Mr.
That Dr. Falconer was much impressed by the collection of M. de Perthes is shown in a communication which he sent at once to his friend Prestwich: "I have been richly rewarded," he exclaims. "His collection of wrought flint implements, and of the objects of every description associated with them, far exceeds everything I expected to have seen, especially from a single locality.
J. Gwyn, *Moseley, Professor H. N, *Ommaney, Admiral Sir E, Pengelly, W., Esq., Perkin, W. H., Esq., Prestwich, Professor, Sclater-Booth, The Right Hon. George, Sorby, Dr.
In regard to the accompanying mammalia, some of them, like the mammoth and tichorhine rhinoceros, may have been able to endure the rigours of a northern winter as well as the reindeer, which we find fossil in the same gravel. Mr. Prestwich inclines to this opinion. None of those contortions of the strata above described have as yet been observed in the lower drift.
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