2i 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



euch importance to trie facts, for which we are indebted to M. Lartet, 

 and which entirely refute these conjectures. 



M. Lartet studied at Aurignac, in the south of France, a burial- 

 place of these remote times. It is a grotto excavated in the side of a 

 hill, at a height which is not attained by water-courses analogous to 

 those of which we find the trace in the neighborhood of Abbeville. 

 This sepulchral grotto at the time of discovery was closed by a slab 

 taken from a bed of rocks at some distance from this point. In the 

 interior were found the bones of seventeen persons, men, women, and 

 children ; and before the entrance were found the well-attested re- 

 mains of a fireplace. There were traces of funeral repasts that the 

 first inhabitants of our country were in the habit of making, and such 

 as we sometimes find in our own day among certain European peo- 

 ples. In the ashes of this fireplace were found bones bearing the 

 trace of fire, and excrements of wild animals. These bones, scorched 

 by the fire, bearing traces of the hand of man, were the bones of the 

 bear and of the rhinoceros. The excrements were those of a species 

 of hyena contemporaneous with the preceding animals. Here, conse- 

 quently, man appears as eating the animals in question ; as making his 

 repast of those very animals whose contemporaneousness with him 

 had been disputed. 



M. Lartet crowned these beautiful researches by discovering in a 

 cave, in the centre of France, a piece of ivory on which was unmistak- 

 ably represented the very mammoth (Fig. 6) to which I have just called 

 your attention. It is very evident that this picture could only be 

 made by a man who lived at the same time with this elephant. 



In view of M. Lartet's discoveries, we must admit the existence of 

 fossil man, that is to say, the coexistence of our species with the lost 

 species of animals of which I have spoken. 



Since this epoch, besides, we have not only found traces of these 

 primitive industries, but debris of jawbones, and entire crania. 

 Hence we can judge of the characters which distinguished our first 

 ancestors. Strange to tell, we find that these men who, even in France, 

 warred with stone weapons such as I have shown you, against the ele- 

 phant and the rhinoceros, have still at the present day in Europe de- 

 scendants presenting the same characters. 



So man lived in the Quaternary epoch. May we go further, and 

 admit that he also existed during the Tertiary epoch ? Was'he con- 

 temporaneous, not only with the rhinoceros and mammoth, of which I 

 have spoken, but also with earlier mammals ? 



The question is perhaps still premature. Some facts seem to indi- 

 cate that it is so ; but in such matters it is better to adjourn conviction 

 than to admit opinions that are yet in doubt. Consequently, we shall 

 regard the debate as remaining open. 



After demonstrating that man goes back in geologic time to an 

 epoch much anterior to that in which we formerly believed, we are 



