Amiens and Abbeville do not, however, enjoy a monopoly in these flint implements; they are found, apparently, all over the earth. At any rate, we can boast in our land of such treasures, and we can proudly record that the first discovered specimens belong to England. Let Amiens and Abbeville by all means be commemorated as the scenes of M. Boucher de Perthes' persevering investigations, which have furnished the incitement to the present remarkable inquiry—let the names of Boucher de Perthes, Prestwich, Falconer, Flower, and Evans, be duly honoured as the pioneers of the investigation; but let us also think of Hoxne, Grays, Ilford, Maidstone, Stanway, and the scores of other places where mammalian bones have been found in our own land—and, let us hope that our young geologists will set to work, and reap a rich harvest in the yet ungarnered fields. Does not this first recorded implement—this earliest discovered relic—(fig. 5) treasured and preserved in the Sloane collection, the nucleus of the British Museum, and entered in that old catalogue, two hundred years ago—encourage them. Does it not say in unmistakable language “Under your feet these relies may be found?”There is another of these spear-shaped flints, which has obtained a great deal of notoriety in the late discussions. It was found at Hoxne, in Suffolk—a place memorable in the history of the good king Edmund, the saint and martyr—and was described, and figured in the “Archæologia,” (see cut 9, p. 20), by Mr. Frere, the finder, who, with remarkable acuteness, seems to have fully comprehended the value and true bearing of his discovery. His paper is, even now, an excellent epitome of the subject; and we give it at length, just as it was read in 1797, before the Society of Antiquaries of London.
II.—Pre-Cambrian Volcanos and Glaciers
