548 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



by the mayor, and escorted to the kjokkenraoddings, their goal, by 

 hundreds of pictui-esque mounted peasants. Here a grand display of 

 skeletons, and of the refuse of the meals by which these frames were 

 nourished, rejoiced their eyes ; and later the speechifying, etc., were 

 gone through with as much enjoyment as before. 



On Saturday the two kings honored the seance with their presence 

 to hear the great Tertiary debate, which M. Mortillet, of the Musee 

 St. Germain, opened with needlessly elementary instruction as to the 

 formation of flakes, and asserted his belief in the disputed ancestor's 

 existence in a speech lasting an hour and a half. 



" He argued high, he argued low, 

 He also argued round about him." 



An Englishman, known, from his habitual demand for evidence, in 

 the foreign scientific world as le petit St. TJiomas, answered him with 

 geological and other objections. He said that no flakes indubitably 

 found in these Tertiary beds were of unmistakable human manufacture, 

 but were such as might be due to natural forces ; and insisted on the 

 necessity of strong proof before accepting, as an established fact, man's 

 existence at a time so widely remote from ours a time when the hip- 

 parion was the nearest living representative of the horse, and since 

 which the whole fauna had almost completely changed. Then St. 

 Thomas wound up by declaring that, though for twenty years he had 

 upheld the antiquity of our race, as proved by the discoveries at St. 

 Acheul and in other old river-valleys, and it therefore ill became him 

 to dispute it now, he could not be satisfied to rest his j^edigree on a 

 single bulb of percussion. 



M. de Quatrefages, who does not believe in evolution as applied to 

 the human race, declared for Miocene man. So did M. Capellini, who 

 had already brought some pet whalebones, found in the marine beds of 

 Italy, before the Congress at Pesth ; which bones he believes to have 

 been scored in Miocene days by wrought flints. Others venture to 

 think the marks may be due to the teeth of fishes rather than to hu- 

 man agency. Virchow was dubious. Most suspended their verdict 

 until there should be more conclusive evidence, so the resolution of 

 this great question was adjourned to the next session. 



Of course, one excursion was to lovely Cintra, and to Dom Fernan- 

 do's picturesque Penha palace perched on a peak there, with its castel- 

 lated walls and little gilt domes. It was grand to see savants gravely 

 riding the tiny donkeys down perilously deep descents. However, 

 thanks more to the sure-footedness of the beasts than to the skill of the 

 riders, no one came to grief. The views at Cintra over the rocky 

 peaks, great pine-woods, and long-stretching plain, with the misty At- 

 lantic as an horizon, are beautiful, and the Moorish remains there are 

 most curious. That evening the real King gave a ball at Cascaes to 

 the Congress, but, in spite of the courtesy of the hosts, the dancing 



