ul
navigators. But they are said to have called themselves
_Loutouchezi_,--that is to say, a residence in the midst of the waters.
Other etymologists cast doubts upon all these deductions, and the matter
is not very important. The early Parisians were one of the smallest of
the Gaulish tribes, and preferred the islands to the mainland as a safer
place of residence; they were surrounded by the Carnutes, Senones, and
other, stronger people whose names have not been perpetuated. Of their
ten islands and sand-banks, which were preserved until late in the
Middle Ages, there are now only two remaining, the Ile Saint-Louis and
Ile de la Cite. The ancient town, like the modern one, lay in the centre
of a "tertiary" basin, about sixty-five metres, or two hundred and ten
feet, above the level of the sea, broken here and there by low hills.
The modern historian, Duruy, quotes Strabo as finding a proof of divine
providence in the fortunate configuration of the soil of Gaul; and that
writer testifies that the whole country was inhabited, even in the
marshes and woods. "The cause of this is, however, rather a dense
population than the industry of the inhabitants. For the women there are
both very prolific and excellent nurses, while the men devote themselves
rather to war than to husbandry."

The antiquity of the inhabitants of Gaul is now pushed back by the
learned far beyond the days of Caesar. M. A. Thieullen, in two
communications addressed to the _Societe d'anthropologie_ at Paris
(January and February, 1898), maintained that the chipped flint
arrow-heads found at Chelles and Saint-Acheul, which have been
considered as the earliest works of prehistoric man, are, in reality, in
common with the polished stone hatchets of the Neolithic age, the
products of an industry in a high state of development, the result of
successive essays by numberless generations. In this theory he is
supported by other scientists, among them the English geologist,
Prestwich; and in this insistence upon the artistic quality of the
chipped and polished flints and the prodigious number of rudimentary
utensils which have preceded and accompanied them is found another
argument in favor of the great antiquity of man and his existence in the
tertiary period. The soil of Paris has furnished many of these superior
flints, and the comparative state of civilization to which the locality
early attained is further testified to by the discovery, in the early
months o