were filled up, the changes which have taken place have resulted rather in the extinction, than in the creation of species. The stag, horse, boar, dog, in short, all our existing forms of mammalia, were already in existence, and there would have been in reality more just cause for surprise if man alone had been unrepresented.

CHAPTER IX.

ON THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.

WHIL

HILE we have been straining our eyes to the East, and eagerly watching excavations in Egypt and Assyria, suddenly a new light has arisen in the midst of us; and the oldest relics of man yet discovered have occurred, not among the ruins of Nineveh or Heliopolis, not on the sandy plains of the Nile or the Euphrates, but in the pleasant valleys of England and France, along the banks of the Seine and the Somme, the Thames and the Waveney.

So unexpected were these discoveries, so irreconcileable with even the greatest antiquity until lately assigned to the human race, that they were long regarded with neglect and suspicion. M. Boucher de Perthes, to whom we are so much indebted for this great step in the history of mankind, observed, as long ago as the year 1841, in some sand containing mammalian remains, at Menchecourt, near Abbeville, a flint, rudely fashioned into a cutting instrument. In the following years other weapons were found under similar circumstances, and especially during the formation of the Champ de Mars at Abbeville, where a large quantity of gravel was moved and many of the so-called "hatchets" were discovered. In the year 1846 M. Boucher de Perthes published his first work on the subject, entitled "De l'Industrie Primitive, ou les Arts et leur Origine." In this he announced,

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that he had found human implements in beds unmistakeably belonging to the age of the drift. In his "Antiquités Celtiques et Antédiluviennes" (1847), he also gave numerous illustrations of these stone weapons, but unfortunately the figures were so small as scarcely to do justice to the originals. For seven years M. Boucher de Perthes made few converts; he was looked upon as an enthusiast, almost as a madman. At length, in 1853, Dr. Rigollot, till then sceptical, examined for himself the drift at the now celebrated St. Acheul, near Amiens, found several weapons, and believed. Still the new creed met with but little favor; prophets are proverbially without honor in their own country, and M. Boucher de Perthes was no exception to the rule. At last, however, the tide turned in his favor. Dr. Falconer, passing through Abbeville, visited his collection, and made known the result of his visit to Mr. Joseph Prestwich, who, with Mr. John Evans, proceeded to Abbeville. I have always regretted that I was unable to accompany my friends on this occasion. They examined carefully not only the flint weapons, but also the beds in which they were found. For such an investigation our two countrymen were especially qualified: Mr. Prestwich, from his long examination and great knowledge of the tertiary and quaternary strata; and Mr. Evans, as having devoted much study to the stone implements belonging to what we must now consider as the second, or at least the more recent, Stone period. On their return to England Mr. Prestwich communicated the results of his visit to the Royal Society, while Mr. Evans described the implements themselves in the Transactions of the Society of Antiquaries.t

On the Occurrence of Flint Implements associated with the Remains of Extinct Species, in Beds of a late Geological Period, May 19, 1859. Phil. Trans. 1860.

+ Flint Implements in the Drift. Archæologia, 1860-62.