754 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



lutely repel this view, for it discusses the possible existence of pre- 

 adamites. Religion even seems disinterested in the question, for the 

 Abbe Bourgeois, whose discoveries have given rise to M. de Mortillet's 

 anthropopithecuses, and who has not rejected the theory, has always 

 passed for a soundly orthodox priest, while he is known to be a keen 

 observer. Nothing is against an imj)artial examination of the ques- 

 tion. Only the objections may be offered to his views that no one has 

 ever seen an anthropopithecus, the structure and characteristics of 

 which have been worked out by pure reasoning alone, and that the 

 distance that must have separated the precursor of man from man 

 himself is calculated upon the extremely uncertain basis of the dis- 

 tance between quaternary and existing man. 



According to M. de Mortillet's admission, quaternary man was him- 

 self gradually modified. " His blood," he says, " was infused into the 

 new race, and may even reappear by atavism in our own times." The 

 question is reduced to one of learning whether there existed in Europe, 

 alongside of the miocene anthrojtomorphs of St. Gaudens, a primitive 

 and rudimentary man of unknown physical qualities, who had indus- 

 trial instinct enough to cut flints for his use. We are thus brought to 

 the inquiry whether the instruments collected at Thenay by Abbe 

 Bourgeois, and those discovered afterward in Portugal, in more recent 

 but unquestionably tertiary formations, are authentic, or are not sim- 

 ple flakes and natural fragments that have been confounded with ar- 

 ticles intentionally fabricated. Thenay, where the earlier of these 

 flints were discovered, is in the Lower Miocene, an inferior forma- 

 tion to that of Sansan, in which the anthropomorphic fauna we have 

 spoken of were included. The existence of the rhinoceros at the time 

 of its formation is still in doubt, the mastodons had not yet appeared, 

 the elephants were still far off ; the hipparions, the predecessors of the 

 horse, were not to make their appearance till long afterward. The 

 marsupials had disappeared, and the carnivora were represented only 

 by ambiguous types. None of the animal forms that were to accom- 

 pany the earlier steps of man, and which he would have to contend 

 against or tame, had showed themselves. Yet man is to be placed, in 

 this rudest condition of nature, already in possession of fire ! There 

 is certainly little a priori probability of this. To be convinced of it, 

 we need more evidence than has yet been presented to us a few flints 

 among many thousands of others, that may have been intentionally 

 chipped. This is a little, but not enough, in view of the improba- 

 bilities which accumulate, against our putting faith in such indica- 

 tions. 



The tertiary flints of Portugal are not calculated to add strength 

 to the conviction. They come from an unquestionably tertiary fresh- 

 water formation of the recent Miocene age. The Portuguese flora of 

 the age was characterized by the presence of elms, poplars, cinnamon- 

 trees, saponarias, and tamarinds, which testify to a mild and equable 



