To William Whewell   26 January 1860

My dear Whewell,

On my return home I found so much occupation & then an unexpected summons back here, that I really have had no opportunity of fulfilling my promise to write before now– To answer your queres catagorically

1. The Celts occur in a brick earth pit at Honne & tho' recent observations have not yet absolutely demonstrated the truth of M ^r Frere's original account in the Archiologia, I have now seen that account, & am quite prepared to admit the extreme probability of its correctness, & that the Celts really occur in undisturbed Drift – of a freshwater origin. The beds appear to cap the sides of a water course or valley of excavation, pretty much as described in regard to the Abbeville & Amiens stations.

2. The Celts are unquestionably the work of man – very like those I have now seen from the French localities–

3. I suppose they were used as hatchets, mounted in horn or wood, after a fashion which has been found & described in some (later) cases in Mons. Perthe's work & others–

The age of this Drift I by no means consider to have been satisfactorily established but it must be very old– I have a fact to detail connecting Suffolk Drift which seems to show (in such cases as this) that it may & must be of rapid accumulation. Then comes the enquiry into the present conditions of the surface – & I do not see why we may not suppose a considerable elevation throughout the N. of Europe to have taken place within a moderate number of 1000's of years, sufficient to explain this– The facts related in the letter of the Danish Professor (whose name I forget) in the Athenæum, appear to prove that in some cases very little alteration indeed has taken place by the action of water upon the mounds in which the savages who used these celts stored them, as it should seem (from Sir C. Lyell's account of a modern mound) as in an armoury– But I am not sufficiently up to the question to say much about it – I hope to visit the locality at Amiens, where I think it has been clearly demonstrated these weapons are found in undisturbed Drift– I have now seen 2 photographs which are perfectly convincing– I have an examination to attend to tomorrow & return home on Saturday – to find Louisa with 2 sweet young ladies she is expecting, if we may judge by their name of Sugars.

Kind regards (to which Mrs Hooker bids me add hers) to Lady Afflick | Y ^rs truly | J S Henslow