human bones were found in exactly the same
condition of decay as those of the cave bear,
tiger, and mammoth. Sir Charles, while
expecting that some human remains will be
detected in the older alluvium of European valleys,
now that curiosity is stimulated and research
rightly directed, tells us we must not forget
that Dr. Schmerling, after finding extinct
mammalia and flint tools in forty-two Belgian
caverns, found human bones, only in three or four.
It was not till the year 'fifty-five that the first
skull of the musk buffalo was found in the
fossiliferous gravel of the Thames; and not till
eighteen 'sixty that the same animal was proved
to have co-existed in France with the mammoth.
Not many years ago, the government of
Holland drained and converted into dry land the
forty-five thousand square acres of the Lake of
Haarlem. There had been many a shipwreck
on that water, many a naval fight, hundreds of
Dutch and Spanish soldiers had been drowned
there, and thirty or forty thousand souls had
lived on its borders. Yet the thousands of
miles of trenches cut on the farms spread over
its bed, disclosed no evidence that man had ever
lived on or about that soil, except the evidence
of a few works of art. One or two wrecked
Spanish ships and Spanish arms were found.
But there was never found a human bone.

In eighteen 'sixty, flint implements of the
Amiens type were found in the lowest gravel at
La Motte Piquet, in the suburbs of Paris, on the
left bank of the Seine. A flint hatchet has been
found, also in gravel, at Précy, in the valley of
the Oise. A few flint implements have been
found, also, in the gravel bed on which a part of
London is built. In the British Museum is a
flint spear-head found, with an elephant's tooth,
at Black Mary's, near Gray's Inn-lane, London.
At Pease Marsh, in the alluvium of the Wey,
near Guildford, a wedge-shaped flint instrument
has been found; another in the valley of the
Dasent; others among waste at the foot of the
cliff between Herne Bay and the Reculvers.
In the days when such instruments were made
here, what is now German Ocean was land;
England was connected with the mainland; and
the Thames, running further east, flowed probably
into the Rhine. In the ancient river gravel of
the valley of the Ouse, MR. WYATT, after visiting
the gravel-pits of Acheul, resolved to watch the
excavations of the gravel-pits at Biddenham,
two miles from Bedford. Several flint tools
have consequently been found here, in association
with bones of the elephant and deer. At Hoxne,
near Diss, in Suffolk, even in the first year of this
century, MR. JOHN FRERE found, and described
to the Society of Antiquaries, flint tools of the
Amiens type, in gravel under clay. The site has
been revisited, and more tools have been found.
The cutting edge of these tools is so sharp and
fresh, that Mr. Frere may have been right in
supposing that there was a manufactory here. In
the gravel at Icklingham, in Suffolk,
lance-heads have been found. The only British cave
from which implements resembling those of
Amiens have been obtained, since full attention
has been drawn to the points needing minute
observation, is that recently opened near Wells,
in Somersetshire. It is near the cave of Wokey
Hole, from which the mouth of the river Axe
issues on the southern flanks of the Mendips.
Here are found fossil bones of many extinct
animals, intermixed with some arrow-heads
made of bone, and many chipped flints and
chipped pieces of chert. A flint spear-head was
found, embedded side by side with a hyæna's
tooth. Among the bone caves of the peninsula
of Gower, in Glamorganshire, is a newly-discovered
cave. COLONEL WOOD found, in 'sixty-one,
the remains of two species of rhinoceros in
an undisturbed part of the deposit, lying above
some well-shaped flint knives, evidently of
human workmanship.

The issue of all these researches is, in the
opinion now held by geologists, that although
man, whose traces are found only in the
post-tertiary deposits, is geologically a new comer
upon earth, his antiquity is, nevertheless, much
greater than chronologists have hitherto
supposed.

FLOWERS OF THE WITNESS-BOX.

"THE evidence you shall give, shall be the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,
so help you——" and with the customary adjuration,
which, on my ears, always grates with
disagreeable harshness from the thoroughly methodical
and indifferent sing-song in which the words
are pronounced, A. B. is sworn and proceeds to
give evidence. I dare say that he often deposes to
more than the truth, and I am afraid as often
to less than the truth; but I doubt the frequency
of his coming up to the exact exigent standard
demanded by his oath. Granting him honest, he
may be nervous and irritable, with a confused
memory for dates, and an inconvenient knack for
remembering only those events or portions of
conversation which the gentleman in the wig
who is teasing him with questions most devoutly
wishes were dismissed from his mind. But,
consider the witness sworn. Why, if he be a
man, does a fatuous greasy smile generally play
about his lips as he mumbles at the ragged
dog's-eared book which the usher, with an
utter disregard for the fitness of things, has
provided from the nearest second-hand book-stall
among other "properties" of a court of law?
Why, when he is duly sworn, does he ordinarily
pass the back of his hand over his lips as though
to wipe away the taste of the oath he has just
taken? Why, from the begining to the end of
his ordeal in the witness-box, is his hat the bane
and burden of his existence? Why is the
smoothing of its nap—when it has any—a task
which he incessantly pursues? Why is its brim
an object to be perpetually plucked and pinched
with dubby fingers? Why, if the witness be a
lady, does she, in lieu of mumbling or kissing
the book, give it a defiant smack that is half a
bite—as though it were a Man, and she meant
to stand no nonsense from it? Why does the