his pretended antediluvian axes and knives were only to be found in the gravel beds of the valley of the Somme; how it happened that he alone had found any such ? Numerous facts gave a prompt reply to these questions, of which the contempt and incredulity were ill-disguised. Others were sought for and were found, indeed, had already been almost unconsciously found.

In fact, without going back to the precise details which antiquity has furnished us respecting the flints called thunder-bolts, there is in the British Museum a stone weapon, found by Conyers, as the label tells us, more than a century and a half ago, with an elephant's tooth, near Gruyes. This weapon, which, according to Evans, is rudely sketched in a letter on the antiquities of London, dated 1715, is the exact reproduction of the flint lance heads so common in the diluvian beds of Abbeville and Saint-Acheul.

A century later than Conyers, in 1800, John Frere found in a gravel quarry at Hoxne, in Suffolk, flint tools of the same type as those since found in the valley of the Somme, and like them, intermixed with bones of extinct elephants and rhinoceros. Similar discoveries have since been made in every quarter of the globe. Thus in this case also, truth, long denied and banished, has overcome systematic and contemptuous incredulity, and, at the moment I write these lines, there is no scientific man who is not convinced that the most rudely shaped flints show human workmanship as clearly as the axes of the Roman lictors: for the flints speak,' says Lubbock. We have heard and have still more to hear of what they have to tell us.

6

II. DISCOVERY OF THE JAWBONE OF MOULIN

QUIGNON.

On March 23, 1863 (we are careful to give this memorable date), M. Boucher de Perthes was gratified by the discovery, at Moulin-Quignon, of the famous jawbone, or rather the part of a human jawbone, which became the subject of so much controversy. It lay imbedded about five yards deep in dark sandy gravel, the

JAWBONE OF MOULIN-QUIGNON.

43

colour of which was due to an admixture of manganese and oxide of iron, and which was in immediate contact with the subjacent chalk. The same bed contained carved flint, axes of the Saint-Acheul type, and teeth of the mammoth (Elephas primigenius). On April 24, in the same year, M. de Quatrefages made known this discovery in the author's name to the members of the Institute, proclaiming it to be one of the most important which could be made in natural science.' (See fig. 10.)

All the newspapers, not only the scientific journals, but also the political organs, vied with each other in spreading the news of the discovery; and it was indeed

a memorable event. Following the example of M. de Quatrefages, who had been one of the first to visit Abbeville to inspect the place of this important discovery, and to enquire into all the accompanying circumstances, several English savants, whose names are justly celebrated (Evans, Falconer, Prestwich, all members of the Royal Society, who had already visited Abbeville in 1859), again visited France, and having entered at once upon a strict and conscientious enquiry into the alleged facts, they began to entertain doubts as to the authenticity of the jawbone, and to suspect that it might have been fraudulently introduced by the workmen into the bed where it was found. Far from denying in a general way the great antiquity of the human race, these men of science had more than once brought proofs in its favour

but in the present case they did not feel absolutely convinced, and they said so honestly.

Their doubts were principally due to the close resemblance which this jawbone bears, physically and anatomically, to other inferior maxillaries belonging to members of races now in existence. Prompted by the desire of dispelling such doubts, and of resolving at once and for all the important question in debate, M. de Quatrefages proposed that a kind of congress should be held, at which, after having seen and handled the subject of dispute, English and French men of science should discuss together the difficult or disputed points and then draw their conclusions.

In accordance with this suggestion, Messrs. Busk, Carpenter, Falconer, and Prestwich went to Abbeville. Among the French savants were MM. Milne-Edwards, de Quatrefages, Desnoyers, Delesse, Lartet, Daubrée, Delafosse, Hébert, Albert Gaudry, P. Bert, Alph. MilneEdwards, de Vibraye, Dr. Vaillant, l'Abbé Bourgeois, Dr. Garrigou, &c. M. H. Milne-Edwards was chosen president of the congress. After the facts had been examined and discussed, it was unanimously agreed that the axes and the jawbone of Moulin-Quignon were really authentic, and that fraud had had no part in their burial. However, Messrs. Busk and Falconer still desired to make some reservations, and the latter requested that the following declaration should be annexed to the report. 'My opinion is that the discovery of the human jawbone is authentic, but that neither its characteristics nor the conditions under which it was found, sufficiently prove that the aforesaid jawbone is of very great antiquity.'

Messrs. H. Milne-Edwards, de Quatrefages, Lartet, Prestwich, and Carpenter, on the other hand, remained firm in the belief that this human relic belonged to an extremely remote date. M. Pictet of Geneva, and the immense majority of geologists, both French and foreign, embraced this opinion, and declared that the man of Moulin-Quignon had witnessed the geological phenomenon which had deposited the beds of diluvian gravel.

CONGRESS OF SAVANTS AT ABBEVILLE.

45

Messrs. Falconer and Busk did not remain long unconvinced. One dissentient voice was raised, however, in the midst of the general concord, and affirmed in the Academy of Sciences at Paris, that neither the axes of MoulinQuignon, nor those of Menchecourt, and of Abbeville, nor even those of Grenelle and Clichy, should be considered as diluvian. Subsequent causes had imbedded them in these strata, which had been disturbed and were even comparatively modern. Therefore, added the same Academician, a great authority in geological questions, it is a mistake or a chimera to believe that man was the contemporary of the mammoth or the diluvian rhinoceros. This incredulous, or at least exceedingly cautious Academician, was M. Elie de Beaumont.

On the other hand, we can oppose to this well known name those of MM. Prestwich, Lyell, Lartet, Desnoyers, Gaudry, and others, who all maintained that the beds of Abbeville and of Moulin-Quignon belonged to the quaternary epoch, and had remained undisturbed from the day of their formation.

This was the state of affairs, and the trial of the jawbone' seemed to be at an end, when on July 18, 1864, M. de Quatrefages communicated to the Academy a new Note, in which he announced that M. Boucher de Perthes had just found, in the district of Moulin-Quignon, already so famous, a second jawbone, a skull, and other human bones. The author of the memorandum insisted upon the identity of the spot, upon the precautions taken to avoid deception, and he declared himself to be as before, absolutely convinced of the authenticity of these remains. The learned Academician left it to geologists to determine the age of the beds whence they were taken, and also the antiquity of the human race buried therein.

The question now appeared to be definitively settled, for so many minute precautions, such a careful examination, such learned consultations, with names so justly respected, seemed to be a guarantee of the truth which was above the least suspicion. Yet it was whispered, and even audibly spoken in certain circles which profess to be well

informed, that the members of the Congress of Abbeville were the victims of a monstrous fraud, and Evans himself repeats that I do not of course allude to the too celebrated Moulin-Quignon jaw, over which I have already pronounced a Requiescat in pace.'1

Even granting that this deception was really practised, no one can deny that the skulls of Grenelle and of Clichy, of which we shall soon have occasion to speak, were taken from an undisturbed bed of grey diluvium, as ancient as that of Moulin-Quignon. The skulls of Neanderthal, of Engis, &c., and the jawbones of Naulette (figs. 11 and 12),

FIG. 11. JAWBONE OF NAULETTE.

FIG. 12. JAWBONE OF CHIMPANZEE.

of Aurignac, and of Arcy, found in the bone caves of the palæolithic age, also bear strong testimony in favour of the great antiquity of the human race. It is in the caves therefore that we will now seek our proofs. But here, more than anywhere else, we must surround ourselves with

1 See Evans, The Ancient Stone Implements, Weapons, and Ornaments of Great Britain, p. 617. Although human bones have not yet been found in the diluvium of English valleys, the author whom we have just quoted admits that the human race is contemporaneous with the extinct animals of which the remains are found abundantly in France in the same diluvium, or in a number of bone caves.