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thousands in the high drift beds near Abbeville, in northern France.

The significance of this discovery was great indeed--far greater than
Boucher himself at first supposed. The very title of his book showed
that he at first regarded these implements and weapons as having
belonged to men overwhelmed at the Deluge of Noah; but it was soon
seen that they were something very different from proofs of the literal
exactness of Genesis: for they were found in terraces at great heights
above the river Somme, and, under any possible theory having regard to
fact, must have been deposited there at a time when the river system
of northern France was vastly different from anything known within
the historic period. The whole discovery indicated a series of great
geological changes since the time when these implements were made,
requiring cycles of time compared to which the space allowed by the
orthodox chronologists was as nothing.

His work was the result of over ten years of research and thought.
Year after year a force of men under his direction had dug into these
high-terraced gravel deposits of the river Somme, and in his book he
now gave, in the first full form, the results of his labour. So far as
France was concerned, he was met at first by what he calls "a conspiracy
of silence," and then by a contemptuous opposition among orthodox
scientists, at the head of whom stood Elie de Beaumont.

This heavy, sluggish opposition seemed immovable: nothing that Boucher
could do or say appeared to lighten the pressure of the orthodox
theological opinion behind it; not even his belief that these fossils
were remains of men drowned at the Deluge of Noah, and that they were
proofs of the literal exactness of Genesis seemed to help the matter.
His opponents felt instinctively that such discoveries boded danger to
the accepted view, and they were right: Boucher himself soon saw the
folly of trying to account for them by the orthodox theory.

And it must be confessed that not a little force was added to the
opposition by certain characteristics of Boucher de Perthes himself.
Gifted, far-sighted, and vigorous as he was, he was his own worst enemy.
Carried away by his own discoveries, he jumped to the most astounding
conclusions. The engravings in the later volume of his great work,
showing what he thought to be human features and inscriptions upon
some of the flint implements, are worthy of a comic almanac; and at
the National Museum of