292 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Tournal, of Narbonne, discovered in the cavern of Bize specimens 

 of human industry, with a fragment of a human skeleton, among 

 bones of extinct animals. In the following year Christol pub- 

 lished accounts of his excavations in the caverns of Gard ; he had 

 found in position, and under conditions which forbade the idea of 

 after-disturbance, human remains mixed with bones of the extinct 

 hyena of the early Quaternary period. Little general notice was 

 taken of this, for the reactionary orthodox atmosphere involved 

 such discoveries in darkness. 



But in the French Revolution of 1830 the old politico-theologi- 

 cal system collapsed : Charles X and his advisers fled for their 

 lives ; the other continental monarchs got glimpses of new light ; 

 the priesthood in charge of education were put on their good be- 

 havior for a time, and a better era began. 



Under the constitutional monarchy of the house of Orleans in 

 France and Belgium less attention was therefore paid by Govern- 

 ment to the saving of souls ; and we have in rapid succession new 

 discoveries of remains of human industry, and even of human 

 skeletons so mingled with bones of extinct animals as to give ad- 

 ditional proofs that the origin of man was at a period vastly ear- 

 lier than any which theologians had dreamed of. 



A few years later the reactionary clerical influence against 

 science in this field rallied again. Schmerling in 1833 explored a 

 multitude of caverns in Belgium, especially at Engis and Engi- 

 houl, and found human skulls and bones closely associated with 

 bones of extinct animals, such as the cave bear, hyena, elephant, 

 and rhinoceros, while mingled with these were evidences of hu- 

 man workmanship in the shape of chipped flint implements ; dis- 

 coveries of a similar sort were made by De Serres in France and 

 Lund in Brazil ; but, at least as far as continental Europe was 

 concerned, these discoveries were received with much coolness, 

 both by Catholic leaders of opinion in France and Belgium, and 

 by Protestant leaders in England and Holland. Schmerling him- 

 self appears to have been overawed, and gave forth a sort of apol- 

 ogetic theory, half scientific, half theologic, vainly hoping to sat- 

 isfy the clerical side. 



Nor was it much better in England. Sir Charles Lyell, so 

 devoted a servant of prehistoric research thirty years later, was 

 still holding out against it on the scientific side ; and, as to the 

 theological side, it was the period when that great churchman, 

 Dean Cockburn, was insulting geologists from the pulpit of York 

 Minster, and the Rev. Mellor Brown denouncing geology as " a 

 black art," " a forbidden province " ; and when in America Prof. 

 Moses Stuart and others like him were belittling the work of 

 Benjamin Silliman and Edward Hitchcock. 



In 1840 Godwin Austin presented to the Royal Geological So- 



