Jacqnes Boucher De Crevecceur De Perthes, a French archaeologist and author, born at Rethel, department of the Ardennes, Sept. 10, 1788, died in Amiens in August, 1868. He belonged to an old family, and through the influence of his father, author of several botanical works and director of customs at Abbeville, he was employed by Napoleon on various missions to foreign countries. By a royal decree of 1818 he was permitted to add the family name of his mother, De Perthes, who claimed descent from an uncle of Joan of Arc, to his own. He wrote several tragedies and a comedy, and published anonymously in the interest of free trade Opinion de M. Christophe, vigneron, sur les prohibitions et la liberie de commerce (4 parts, 1831-'4). Subsequently he became president of the societe d'emulation at Abbeville, made an extensive collection of Celtic and Roman antiquities, which he presented to the government, and acquired celebrity by his archaeological discoveries and by his work De la creation (5 vols., 1839-41). In 1841 he observed in some sand containing mammalian remains at Menchecourt, near Abbeville, a flint rudely fashioned into a cutting instrument; and during the formation of the Champ de Mars in the same locality, many of the since celebrated iron hatchets were found.

He published his first work on the subject in 1846, De l'industrie primitive, ou les arts et leur origine, claiming that these implements belonged to the age of the drift; and his Antiquites celtiques et antediluviennes (1847) contains many illustrations of the implements, and refers to remains found in the peat, which appear to have been the ruins of lake dwellings. He also wrote De l'homme antediluvien et de ses ceuvres (1860), and Des outils de pierre (1866). His miscellaneous writings comprise a novel and a volume of poetry; an alphabetical dictionary of passions and sensations entitled Homme et choses (4 vols., 1851); Les masques, biographies sans nom, being a collection of ethical disquisitions (4 vols., 1861-'4); Sous dix rois, souvenir's de 1791 d 1860 (8 vols., 1862-'7); Des idees innees (1867); and numerous books of travel.