machines made by him can travel without fatigue ten times as fast as the swiftest horse.

Man has conquered the elements; the winds obey him as his slaves, and soon,, perhaps, ships of a new kind will cut their way through the regions of the air as safely as vessels now traverse the vast extent of the ocean. Fire has become aliquid in his hands. The earth, subjected to an universal analysis, reveals her secrets one by one. short his genius daily invents wonders, which, surprising as they are, now appear so natural that the bare mention here made of them may appear common-place to the reader.

In

Man, I repeat, knows not his own nature nor his own history. Yet nothing of greater moment could be presented as the object of his study, of his active curiosity, and of his eager desire to learn the origin and nature of things.

Wrapped in a thick veil, buried in the remote past, the first records of the human race have long been concealed from the eyes of seekers, who did not even suspect their existence, or at any rate their deep significance. The rare concurrence of fortunate circumstances, the wisdom, ingenuity, and courageous perseverance of a man imbued at once with courage and the true scientific spirit, have been necessary to the complete interpretation of the mysterious language of these splintered stones, of these bones dug out of the bowels of the earth and given back to the light of day after so many thousands of years, perhaps of centuries! Archæology, greeted at first with ironical sneers or the contempt of incredulity, has by an inevitable reaction given rise to extravagant enthusiasm, and to illconsidered systems, which have more than once injured its cause and obstructed its real progress. With equal disregard for over-eager enthusiasts and systematic detractors, we must concern ourselves solely with the results obtained. Beyond all question the most important, the most unex

1 Under the well-chosen name of liquid fire, the learned and laborious Nicklés has defined a substance of which the important discovery cost him his life. May I be allowed to lay the tribute of my affectionate and sincere sorrow on the grave, which closed so prematurely over this savant, who was as honourable as he was learned?

pected, and at the same time one of the most assured of these results, is the establishment of the great antiquity of prehistoric man.

The name itself indicates that history, as it has been hitherto understood and taught, is unable to give us any precise information concerning this antiquity.

Neither the tables of Manetho, nor the Bible itself, can help us here. Many learned men and theologians admit that their chronology is uncertain, full of gaps, and corrupted by copyists and commentators. Sylvestre de Sacy, a Christian of undoubted orthodoxy admitted that there was no Bible chronology. One of our most learned ecclesiastics has owned, with a sincerity which does him credit, that the chronology of the Old Testament has never been accepted by the Church.' He declared it to be the result of the combination of certain dates, of the interpretation of certain passages, which concern neither faith nor morals, and which may be corrupt; it is even certain that there are breaks; and the cosmogonies of the different authorised versions do not agree with each other, &c. &c. Nothing therefore,' continues the learned theologian, need prevent the addition of a greater or less number of years to the generally accepted figure touching the first appearance of man on the earth, if science were able to fix the date with certainty. But this certain result is far from being attained.' On this last point we entirely agree with the learned Abbé Duilhé de Saint-Projet. But the concession which he makes regarding the uncertainty of Bible chronology is in our eyes far more important than his own, since it shelters us from the reproach of impiety so often cast upon unoffending science by those who know nothing of her spirit and misconceive her aims. Moreover, science replies by facts, and often by benefits, to those conclusions, rashly formed à priori, by which some men attempt to annul her discoveries, to accusations as unjust

1 See the Semaine catholique de Toulouse, March 28, 1869, and especially the Minerve de Toulouse, in which the Conférences of M. l'Abbé Duilhé de Saint-Projet are reviewed in a spirit of impartiality which does credit both to the able critic and the learned theologian.

as they are malicious, which are too often and too lightly brought against her. Some of the following facts, revealed by learned men, confirm in all essentials the statements of the purest orthodoxy.

'No date,' says the eminent palæontologist, M. Ed. Lartet, is to be found in Genesis which assigns a time for the birth of primitive humanity; but chronologists have for fifteen centuries endeavoured to force the Bible facts into agreement with their systems. Thus, no less than one hundred and forty different opinions have been formed about the single date of the Creation, and between the extreme variations there is a discrepancy of 3,194 years in the reckoning of the period between the beginning of the world and the birth of Christ. The chief disagreement is with respect to the interval of time nearest to the Creation. From the moment therefore that it becomes a recognised fact that the question of human origin owes no allegiance to dogma, it will become, as it ought to become, a scientific thesis open to discussion, to be considered from every point of view, and capable of receiving that solution which tallies best with fact and with experimental proof.'

Such is our own scientific profession of faith upon this delicate question. It would have been far better to move onward with Galileo than to force an unworthy recantation from him, especially as we have seen in our own day one of the most famous of his countrymen, Father Secchi, Director of the Roman Observatory, and Corresponding Member of the French Institute, proclaim the superiority of the philosophy of this same Galileo, once condemned and imprisoned by the Inquisition. Let science take her course,' we repeat with M. Duruy, 'let her do her work; the soul is at the end of it.' 2

We pass on to the consideration of the means by which the new science of archæology is enabled to establish, not

Ed. Lartet, Nouvelles recherches sur la coexistence de l'homme et des grands mammifères fossiles, réputés caractéristiques de la dernière période géologique (Annales des Sciences Naturelles, 4o Série, t. xv. p. 256.) 2 V. Duruy, Discours au Sénat.

the precise date of the appearance of man on the earth, since this result has not been and perhaps will never be attained, but to determine an approximate date which is certainly prior to that indicated by any cosmogony.

Flints are found scattered over the surface of the soil, or buried in its depths; in the heart of gloomy caves, or beneath the ruins of the most ancient monuments; some rudely shaped, others finely polished and fashioned into forms similar to those of our axes, knives, and tools of every kind.

These flints had been observed by the ancients, who gave them the names of lapides fulminis, cerauniæ gemmæ, &c., and in later times they were called lightning stones, thunderbolts, stones fallen from heaven. They were employed in certain sacred rites by the Egyptians, the Romans, and perhaps also by the Scandinavians, the worshippers of Odin and Thor.

Even in our day, in the nineteenth century, so slow is progress in any direction, these stones, said to be fallen from heaven, are the object of superstitious veneration in remote country districts, and they may not unfrequently be found in the cottages or cowsheds of peasants, who firmly believe that they can thereby preserve their dwellings from lightning, themselves from witchcraft, and their cattle from disease.

But what are these strange stones, which, since they have attracted the notice of antiquaries, have been found in almost every part of the world: at Paris and at the Cape of Good Hope, at Toulouse and Christiania; in the diluvium of the valleys of the Somme and of the Thames, and in the ossiferous clay of the caves of Languedoc and Périgord; in the dolmens of Brittany, of Algeria, and of Palestine; beneath the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon; in the Malay peninsula and in Japan; and even on the banks of the Ohio and the Mississippi?

This question was difficult to answer. According to some, these splintered flints were freaks of nature,' others held that they were of volcanic origin; others again, that they were stones split off by winter frosts. Some sagacious

men maintained that they were gun-flints, and moreover of recent fabrication.

A learned antiquary of Abbeville, struck by the singular form of some of these flints, which abound in Picardy, collected a great number of them, and examined and compared them with anxious and loving study. Were it only a question of pin-making, this is the price of success,' are the words of some philosopher. Unfortunately, the heated imagination of the antiquary, unconsciously influenced by a deceitful illusion, discovered on these flints the figures of men, of animals, of plants, carved with a definite intention, and even graphic signs, true hieroglyphs. Here he was mistaken: but while the dream of the archæologist soon vanished, the reality remained.

These flints were, indeed, works of art, a rude and primitive art it must be confessed; but as real and full of meaning in its simple expression as the Venus of Melos or the friezes of the Parthenon. They were evidently man's handiwork; he had shaped these flints, had given them definite forms, and had made them into weapons or tools.

And as these instruments of war, of the chase, or of handicraft were found buried at great depths, along with bones of extinct species, in strata undisturbed since their original formation, the logical, necessary, irrefutable conclusion is that

Dieu est éternel, mais l'homme est bien vieux.

Old in truth, for he was the contemporary of the mammoth or woolly elephant, of the Rhinoceros tichorhinus, of the unwieldy hippopotamus, the bear, and the great cat of the caverns, of the Irish elk, and of other animals of extinct species, of which our natural history museums possess complete and magnificent specimens.

But M. Boucher de Perthes underwent infinite trouble, annoyance, I had almost said humiliation, before he obtained the recognition of this conclusion, upon which all the others really depended. Etienne Geoffroy SaintHilaire has said, and he speaks with authority, the