nd in the Broxham Cave, I arrived
at the conviction that they were of contemporaneous age, although I
was not prepared to go along with M. de Perthes in all his inferences
regarding the hieroglyphics and in an industrial interpretation of the
various other objects which he had met with."(4)

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. He has made great additions, since the
publication of his first volume, in the second, which I now have by
me. He showed me flint hatchets which HE HAD DUG UP with his own hands,
mixed INDISCRIMINATELY with molars of elephas primigenius. I examined
and identified plates of the molars and the flint objects which were
got along with them. Abbeville is an out-of-the-way place, very little
visited; and the French savants who meet him in Paris laugh at Monsieur
de Perthes and his researches. But after devoting the greater part of
a day to his vast collection, I am perfectly satisfied that there is
a great deal of fair presumptive evidence in favor of many of his
speculations regarding the remote antiquity of these industrial objects
and their association with animals now extinct. M. Boucher's hotel
is, from the ground floor to garret, a continued museum, filled with
pictures, mediaeval art, and Gaulish antiquities, including antediluvian
flint-knives, fossil-bones, etc. If, during next summer, you should
happen to be paying a visit to France, let me strongly recommend you to
come to Abbeville. I am sure you would be richly rewarded."(5)

This letter aroused the interest of the English geologists, and in the
spring of 1859 Prestwich and Mr. (afterwards Sir John) Evans made a
visit to Abbeville to see the specimens and examine at first hand the
evidences as pointed out by Dr. Falconer. "The evidence yielded by the
valley of the Somme," continues Falconer, in speaking of this visit,
"was gone into with the scrupulous care and severe and exhaustive
analysis which are characteristic of Mr. Prestwich's researches. The
conclusions to which he was conducted were communicated to the Royal
Society on May 12, 1859, in his celebrated memoir, read on May 26th and
publi