Let us, then, suppose that, at the time when flint hatchets were embedded in great numbers in the ancient gravel which now forms the terrace of St. Acheul, the main river and its tributaries were annually frozen over for several months in winter. In that case, the primitive people may, as Mr. Prestwich hints, have resembled in their mode of life those American Indians who now inhabit the country between Hudson's Bay and the Polar Sea. The habits of those Indians have been well described by Hearne, who spent some years among them. As often as deer and other game become scarce on the land, they betake themselves to fishing in the rivers; and for this purpose, and also to obtain water for drinking, they are in the constant practice of cutting round holes in the ice, a foot or more in diameter, through which they throw baited hooks or nets. Often they pitch their tent on the ice, and then cut such holes through it, using ice-chisels of metal when they can get copper or iron, but when not, employing tools of flint or hornstone. The great accumulation of gravel at St. Acheul has taken place in part of the valley where the tributary streams, the Noye and the Arve, now join the Somme. These tributaries, as well as the main river, must have been running at the height first of 100 feet, and afterwards at various lower levels above the present valley-plain, in those earlier times when the flint tools of the antique type were buried in successive river beds. I have said at various levels, because there are, here and there, patches of drift at heights intermediate between the higher and lower gravel, and also some deposits, showing that the river once flowed at elevations above as well as below the level of the platform of St. Acheul. As yet, however, no patch of gravel skirting the valley at heights exceeding 100 feet above the Somme has yielded flint tools or other signs of the former sojourn of Man in this region.