NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 293 



ciety an account of his discoveries in Kent's Cavern near Torquay, 

 and especially of human bones and implements mingled with, 

 bones of the elephant, rhinoceros, cave bear, hyena, and other 

 extinct animals ; yet this memoir, like that of McEnery fifteen 

 years before, found an atmosphere so unfavorable that it was not 

 published. 



But just at the middle of the nineteenth century came the be- 

 ginning of a new epoch in science — an epoch when all these earlier 

 discoveries were to be interpreted by means of investigations in 

 a different field : for, in 1847, a man previously unknown to the 

 world at large, Boucher de Perthes, published at Paris the first 

 volume of his work on Celtic and Antediluvian Antiquities, and 

 in this he showed engravings of typical flint implements and weap- 

 ons, of which he had discovered thousands upon thousands in the 

 high drift beds near Abbeville in northern France. 



The significance of this discovery was great indeed — far greater 

 than Boucher himself at first supposed. The very title of his 

 book showed that he at first regarded these implements and weap- 

 ons as having belonged to men overwhelmed at the Deluge of 

 Noah ; but it was soon seen that they were something very differ- 

 ent from proofs of the literal exactness of Genesis : for they were 

 found in terraces at great heights above the river Somme, and, 

 under any possible theory having regard to the truth, must have 

 been deposited there at a time when the river system of northern 

 France was vastly different from anything known in the historic 

 period. The whole discovery indicated a series of great geologi- 

 cal changes since the time when these implements were made, re- 

 quiring cycles of time compared to which the space allowed by 

 the orthodox chronologists were as nothing. 



His work was the result of over ten years of research and 

 thought. Year after year a force of men under his direction had 

 dug into these high-terraced gravel deposits of the river Somme, 

 and in his book he now gave, in the first full form, the results of 

 his labor. So far as France was concerned, he was met at first by 

 what he calls " a conspiracy of silence," and by a contemptuous 

 opposition among orthodox scientists, at the head of whom stood 

 Elie de Beaumont. 



This heavy, sluggish opposition seemed immovable : nothing 

 that Boucher could do or say appeared to lighten the pressure of 

 the orthodox theological opinion behind it — not even his belief 

 that these fossils were remains of men drowned at the Deluge of 

 Noah, and that they were proofs of the literal exactness of Gene- 

 sis seemed to help the matter. His opponents felt instinctively 

 that such discoveries boded danger to the accepted view, and they 

 were right : Boucher himself soon saw the folly of trying to account 

 for them by the orthodox theory which he had adopted at first. 



