THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



OCTOBER, 1874. 



THE FOSSIL MAN OF MENTONE. 



By THEODOEE GILL, M. D., Ph. D. 



THE attention of all the readers of The Popular Science Month- 

 ly has doubtless been attracted by the notices of the discovery, 

 by M. Riviere, at several times within the last three years, of more or 

 less complete fossil skeletons of man, deep in the floors of caverns near 

 the town of Mentone. This town, formerly tolerably well known as 

 a watering-place on the Mediterranean, in Italy, but near the present 

 French boundary, bids fair to be best known to the readers of our own 

 day in connection with the primitive history of our race, and as the 

 sepulchre from which have been exhumed the oldest skeletal remains 

 of representatives of the genus Somo. Of the first discovered and 

 illustrated of these skeletons, as well as still the most complete, we 

 now present an account, accompanied by a copy of the plate attached 

 to the special monograph, by M. Riviere,^ descriptive of it ; the pres- 

 ent account is almost confined to a critical analysis and resume of the 

 facts embodied in the monograph, the consideration of the more re- 

 cent discoveries being best deferred to a future time, when the new 

 facts will doubtless be detailed in a succeeding part of the monograph, 

 and this course seems to be the most advisable, as no additional facts 

 have been discovered which will essentially modify the conclusions 

 and arguments herein urged. 



The monograph referred to was anticipated, to some extent, by 

 publication in the " Archives des Missions Scientifiques," published 

 by the French Ministry of Public Instruction, and is itself issued as a 



^ Decouverte d'un squelette humain de I'epoque paleolithique dans les cavemes des 

 Baousse-Rousse, dites Grottes de Menton, par Emile Riviere. Avec deux photographies, 

 par MM. Anfossi et Radiguet. Paris : J. B. Bailli^re et fils. Menton : chez I'auteur. 

 1873. The plate herewith given is a copy of one of those accompanying M. Riviere's 

 memoir, and was engraved especially for the new edition of Prof. Dana's " Manual of 

 Geology," to the publishers of which, Messrs. Ivison, Blakeman k Taylor, we are in- 

 debted for the use of it. 4to, 64 pp. Two plates. 

 VOL. V. — 41 



