man in undisturbed loam or clay under stalagmite mingled with the remains of extinct animals; all these lay under a perfect floor of stalagmite and must have accumulated in the cave before the concretion began to form. Mr. Austen thought such facts could not be explained away by supposing that the cave had been anciently used as a burying-ground, as in Dr. Buckland's well-known case of the human skeleton of Paviland, because in the Devon cave the flint implements were widely distributed through the loam and lay beneath the stalagmite.

A considerable time since the Rev. John Cumming in his Geological Description of the Isle of Man noticed the occurrence of the remains of the great stag imbedded in mud with "implements of human art and industry, though of an uncouth and ancient character," and in another passage, after alluding to a submarine forest to which he was disposed to assign a more ancient date, he observes, "It is singular that the trunk of an oak-tree which has been removed from the submerged forest at Strandhall, exhibits upon its surface the marks of a hatchet."*

Again, thirteen years prior to M. Boucher de Perthès, Dr. Schmerling had published an account of his having been engaged in searching for the traces of man, and with about the same encouragement from the scientific world.t

He discovered in the cave of Chokier, two and a half miles south-west from Liège, a polished needle-shaped bone, having a hole pierced obliquely through it at the

* Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, 1860, p. 472.

Recherches sur les Ossements Fossiles découverts dans les Cavernes de la province de Liège, 1833-4.

base-such a cavity he observed as had never given passage to an artery. This instrument was embedded in the same deposit with the remains of a rhinoceros. In the third edition of his Principles of Geology and again in the fourth and succeeding editions of this valuable work, Sir Charles Lyell gave a brief account of Schmerling's researches, "without," as he says, "pretending to call in question their trustworthiness, but at the same time without giving them the weight which I now consider they were entitled to." He now admits that Schmerling had really discovered that man had appeared much sooner upon the earth than geologists were then willing to believe-an act of noble candour quite in keeping with what one might expect from him. It must have been no trifle to be let down into the Engis cave, as Schmerling was day after day and week after week, by means of a rope fastened to a tree so as to slide to the foot of the first opening where the best preserved human relics were found, and when he had thus gained access to the first subterranean gallery, "to creep on all-fours through a contracted passage leading to larger chambers, there to superintend by torch-light" for so many months and even years "the workmen who were breaking through the stalagmite crust as hard as marble in order to remove piece by piece the underlying bone breccia." It must have been nearly as hard to stand, as Schmerling was obliged to do, for hours with one's feet in the mud, with water dripping from the roof on one's head, in order to mark the position and guard against the loss of each single bone of a skeleton.

Besides, when he had toiled for so many long years with all this heroic devotion to the pursuit he had

begun, there was still the possible chance that the fruits of his labours would be at once snatched from him.

Sir Charles Lyell says, "when these circumstances are taken into account we need scarcely wonder, not only that a passing traveller failed to stop and scrutinize the evidence, but that a quarter of a century should have elapsed before even the neighbouring professors of the university of Liège came forth to vindicate the truthfulness of their indefatigable and clear-sighted countryman." With all possible deference to Sir Charles, I am disposed to think that the Liège professors ought to have been as capable of judging from the first few discoveries of bones as from any number.

M. Boucher de Perthès was now rapidly getting the upper hand, and not satisfied with alarming Scientific World, he had it put upon its trial; Scientific World did not like this, and endeavoured to show that the flints might have been formed by "violent and longcontinued gyration in water," which is about as possible as that they might have been shot at the earth by the man in the moon or the inhabitants of Saturn, or that they had been made by steam in antediluvian times and buried in the gravel in order to mystify the learned. M. Boucher de Perthès found the worn handles of wood and horn formerly attached to these spear and arrow heads; Scientific World winced, and would have persuaded people that it had been all along convinced of the truth of these interesting discoveries, but it was too late. The investigations of Dr. Rigollot, Mr. Flower, and still more of Mr. Prestwich, who went an unwilling observer, and was convinced when he saw the flint beds of St. Acheul; of

MM. Gaudry and George Pouchet, entirely confirmed M. de Perthès' view. M. Gosse, of Geneva, found a flint hatchet in the sand of the suburb of Grenelle; M. de Verneuil showed the Geological Society of France a worked flint hatchet and an elephant's tusk found in a gravel-pit at Précy, near Creil, in the valley of the Oise. "Thus," as a french author says, "these worked flints have been found in the diluvium of three of our valleys-of the Somme, the Seine, and the Oise."

But it was particularly in 1858 and 1859 that opinion changed so suddenly and widely here, when a new cave being discovered at Brixham, a short distance to the west of Torquay, the Royal Society came forward and made two grants for the purpose of having it thoroughly searched. This was done by several geologists under the superintendence of Mr. Pengelly. They first came to a coating of stalagmite, in which they found a reindeer's horn and the forearm of the cave-bear, then to a thick layer of boneearth, and lastly to gravel.

The bone-earth contained fossils of the mammoth, rhinoceros, cave-bear, cave-hyæna, cave-lion, a kind of horse, and some other animals. They found no human bones, but about fifteen flint knives, generally near the bottom of this layer-one very perfect specimen lying very near the hind-leg of a cave-bear, which had clearly been laid there whole and with the ligaments on it, so that it seems certain that in this very part of England man lived as far back (if not farther) as the time of the hyaena, lion, bear, and rhinoceros.

From this time forth it was no longer scientific to

doubt that weapons made by the rude warriors of primeval days are to be found in strata containing remains of the mammoth and cave-bear, and analogy might well tempt us to believe that they may yet be traced to the very dawn of the time in which the giant mammals first appeared. Scientific World was forthwith found guilty and condemned to death. Before execution it confessed to having perpetrated the same crime on several other occasions. Last dying speech and confession of Scientific World was published by Professors Owen and Ansted, and Sir Charles Lyell, who assisted at the mournful

ceremony.

All honour then to Schmerling, Agassiz, and Boucher de Perthès, for the heroic resolution with which they held on their way through many long years, disregarding alike cold indifference and active hostility, studied sneers and timeserving criticism. Mr. Horner, in his address to the Geological Society (Proceedings, 1861), might well say that the conclusions of M. Boucher de Perthès "had been suffered to be neglected by a strange unreasoning credulity, not very creditable to the scientific men of all countries."

Now, as this system of hunting down and worrying has gone on since the days of Prometheus, who suffered unheard-of woes because he was the friend of man, and of Socrates who was poisoned for wanting men to be virtuous and to believe in a Supreme Being, and as the unfounded persecution of Du Chaillu proves that the spirit is just as strong as ever, the author benevolently offers the soi-disant scientific world a plan which he hopes may relieve it of the