CHAPTER IX - WORKS OF ART IN POST-PLIOCENE ALLUVIUM OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND

Summary

Flint Implements in Post-pliocene 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. 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

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 SSE. of Paris.

It was in this lowest gravel that M. H. T. Grosse, 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 wellformed flint implements of the Amiens type, accompanied by a great number of ruder tools or attempts at tools.