VI NOTES BY THE EDITOR 



the facts already accumulated, we were obliged to resort to hypotheses 

 requiring great changes in the relative levels and drainage of valleys, 

 and. in short, the whole physical geography of the respective regions 

 where the caves are situated changes that would alone imply a 

 remote antiquity for the human fossil remains, and make it probable 

 that man was old enough to have coexisted, at least, with the Sibe- 

 rian mammoth. But, in the course of the last fifteen years, another 

 class of* proofs have been advanced, in France, in confirmation of 

 man's antiquity, into two of which I have personally examined in the 

 course of the present summer, and to which I shall now briefly 

 advert. First, so long ago as the year 1844, M. Aymard, an eminent 

 palaeontologist and antiquary, published an account of the discovery, 

 in the volcanic district of Central France, of portions of two human 

 skeletons the skulls, teeth, and bones imbedded in a volcanic 

 breccia, found in the mountain of Denise, in the environs of Le Puy 

 en Yelay, -- a . breccia anterior in date to one, at least, of the latest 

 eruptions of that volcanic mountain. On the opposite side of the 

 same hill, the remains of a large number of mammalia, most of them 

 of extinct species, have been detected in tufaceous strata, believed, 

 and I think correctly, to be of the same age. The authenticity of 

 the human fossils was from the first disputed by several geologists, 

 but admitted by the majority of those who visited Le Puy, and saw 

 with their own eyes the original specimen now in the museum of that 

 town. Among others, M. Pictet, so well known to you by his excel- 

 lent work on Palaeontology, declared, after his visit to the spot, his 

 adhesion to the opinions previously expressed by Aymard. My 

 friend Mr. Scrope, in the second edition of his ' Volcanoes of Cen- 

 tral France,' lately published, also adopted the same conclusion, 

 although after accompanying me this year to Le Puy, he has seen 

 reason to modify his views. The result of our joint examination 

 a result which, I believe, essentially coincides with that arrived at by 

 MM. Hebert and Lartet, names well known to science, who have 

 also this year gone into this inquiry on the spot may thus be stated. 

 AVe are by no means prepared to maintain that the specimen in the 

 museum at Le Puy which, unfortunately, was never seen in situby 

 any scientific observer is a fabrication. On the contrary, we incline 

 to believe that the human fossils in this, and some other specimens 

 from the same hill, were really imbedded by natural causes in their 

 present matrix. But the rock in which they are entombed consists 

 of two parts, one of which is a compact, and, for the most part, thinly 

 laminated stone, into which none of the human bones penetrate ; the 

 other, containing the bones, is a lighter and much more porous stone, 

 without lamination, to which we could find nothing similar in the 

 mountain of Denise, although both M. Hebert and I made several 

 excavations on the alleged site of the fossils. M. Hebert, therefore, 

 suggested to me that this more porous stone, which resembles in color 



