embedded side by side with a mammoth's tooth.
On the opposite side of the Meuse, in the cavern
of Engiboul, remains of extinct animals abound,
in connexion with flint implements, cut bones,
and the bones of man. Sir Charles Lyell, who
had visited Schmerling and heard his statements,
in an earlier book recorded his opinions without
adding his own assent. That he now gives after
reinvestigating the evidence, and after having
visited some of the yet remaining caves. With
philosophical candour he retracts his former
error, but reminds us that "a discovery which
seems to contradict the general tenor of previous
investigations is naturally received with much
hesitation. To have undertaken in 1832, with
a view of testing its truth, to follow the Belgian
philosopher through every stage of his observations
and proofs, would have been no easy task
even for one well skilled in geology and osteology.
To be let down, as Schmerling was, day after
day, by a rope tied to a tree, so as to slide
to the foot of the first opening of the Engis
cave, where the best preserved human skulls
were found; and after thus gaining 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, week after week and year after year, the
workmen who were breaking through the stalagmitic
crust, as hard as marble, in order to
remove, piece by piece, the underlying bone-breccia,
nearly as hard; to stand for hours with one's
feet in the mud, and 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; and at length, after finding
leisure, strength, and courage for all these
operations, to look forward, as the fruits of one's
labour, to the publication of unwelcome intelligence,
opposed to the prepossession of the
scientific as well as of the unscientific public—
when these circumstances are taken into
account, we need scarcely wonder, not only that a
passing traveller failed to stop and scrutinise
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."

Besides the caverns of Liège, Sir Charles has
visited the cave of the Neanderthal, near Düsseldorf.
This cave is a hundred feet below the top of
a limestone cliff, that overhangs the Düssel, and
a rent in the limestone has connected it with the
upper surface of the country. Here, DR. FUHLROTT
of Elberfeldt found the ancient skeleton of
a man, who, by the form of his bones, had been
very muscular; but whose skull, with a prominent
ridge over the eyes and little forehead, was
declared by Professor Huxley to be the most
ape-like he had ever seen.

But, it may be asked, if remains of man are to
be looked for among those of creatures whose
bones are common in ancient river gravel, why
are we to find traces of human life only in caves?
It is a fact that the existence of such relics has
at length been proved, and such assurance has
at last obtained more favourable reception for
the conclusions of MM. Tournal, Christol,
Schmerling, and others. In the first place,
thirteen years after the publication of Schmerling's
"Researches," M. BOUCHER DE PERTHES
found some flint implements in the alluvium at
Abbeville in Picardy, their antiquity being
demonstrated by their position. Since 1841,
such instruments have been dug out of gravel
and sand in repairing the fortifications at
Abbeville. Bones of the elephant, rhinoceros,
bear, hyæna, &c., were found in the same
bed, but the scientific world generally
accounted for the wrought flints by natural
agency or fraud. DR. RIGOLLOT of Amiens
was one of the most sceptical, until he visited
Abbeville and saw the collection of M. Boucher
de Perthes. He went home, resolved to look
for himself for flint tools in the gravel-pits
near Amiens, forty miles away, and found them
precisely similar, and in the same beds—not in
the vegetable soil, nor in the brick earth with
land and fresh-water shells next below, but in the
lower beds of coarse flint gravel, usually twelve,
twenty, or twenty-five feet below the surface.
He published the results of his investigation,
with careful plates of the implements found, and
four years after that, in 'fifty-eight, the tide of
opinion was turned in England by the results
obtained by MR. PENGELLY from careful
exploration of a new and untouched suite of bone
caverns, near the sea, at Brixham, in
Devonshire. The Royal Society made two grants
towards the expense of a skilled examination of
this cave. Here, flint knives were found in
positions that proved them to have been
manufactured when or before the cave bear lived in
Britain.

The geology of the valley of the Somme was
then explained by MR. PRESTWICH, in company
with MR. JOHN EVANS, of the Society of
Antiquaries; and all doubt of the geologists was set
at rest when Mr. Prestwich extracted with his
own hands from a bed of undisturbed gravel at
St. Acheul, a well-shaped flint hatchet, seventeen
feet below the surface, and found lying on its
flat side. There were no rents in the overlying
beds, which contained many land and fresh-water
shells. The hatchet, therefore, could not
possibly have worked its way down through the
soil, by accident, into that earlier formation. In
the year following, MR. FLOWER, digging for
himself at St. Acheul, disinterred, at a depth of
twenty-two feet from the surface, a fine
symmetrically shaped weapon, of an oval form, lying
in and beneath strata which were to be perfectly
undisturbed.

But, among all the flint implements in the
alluvial sand and gravel of the Somme there has
not been found a single human bone; nor have
human bones been found anywhere in Europe
among the flint tools of valley deposits. Yet we
do find the bones of other mammalia in living
or extinct species, and Cuvier pointed out long
ago that the bones of man, buried on
battlefields, are not found to decay faster than the
bones of horses. In the Liège caverns, also,