29 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



naturally answered that few if any other bones as small as those 

 of man had been found, and that this fact was an additional 

 proof of the great length of the period since man had lived with 

 the extinct animals; for, since specimens of human workman- 

 ship proved man's existence as fully as remains of his bones 

 could do, the absence or even rarity of human and other small 

 bones simply indicated the long periods of time required for 

 dissolving them away. 



Yet Boucher, inspired by the genius he had already shown, 

 and filled with the spirit of prophecy, declared that human bones 

 would yet be found in the midst of the flint implements, and in 

 18G3 he claimed that this prophecy had been fulfilled by the dis- 

 covery at Moulin Quignon of a portion of a human jaw deep in 

 the early Quaternary deposits. But his triumph was short-lived ; 

 the opposition ridiculed his discovery ; they showed that he had 

 offered a premium to his workmen for the discovery of human 

 remains, and they naturally drew the inference that some tricky 

 laborer had deceived him. The result of this was, that the men 

 of science felt obliged to acknowledge that the Moulin Quignon 

 discovery was not proved. 



But ere long human bones were found in the deposits of the 

 early Quaternary period, or indeed of an earlier period, in various 

 other parts of the world, and the question regarding the Moulin 

 Quignon relic was of little importance. 



We have seen that researches regarding the existence of pre- 

 historic man in England and on the Continent were at first 

 mainly made in the caverns ; but the existence of man in the ear- 

 liest Quaternary period was confirmed on both sides the English 

 Channel, in a way even more striking, by the close examination 

 of the drift and early gravel deposits. The results arrived at by 

 Boucher de Perthes were amply confirmed in England. Rude 

 stone implements were found in terraces a hundred feet and 

 more above the levels at which various rivers of Great Britain 

 now flow, and under circumstances which show that, at the time 

 when they were deposited, the rivers of Great Britain in many 

 cases were entirely different from those of the present period, and 

 formed parts of the river system of the European continent. Re- 

 searches in the high terraces above the Thames, the Ouse, as well 

 as at other points in Great Britain, placed beyond a doubt the fact 

 that man existed on the British Islands at a time when they were 

 connected by solid land with the Continent, and made it clear 

 that, within the period of the existence of man in northern Eu- 

 rope, a large portion of the British Islands had been sunk to 

 depths between fifteen hundred and twenty-five hundred feet 

 beneath the Northern Ocean — had risen again from the water — 

 had formed part of the continent of Europe, and had been in 



