72 Antiquity of the Htiman Race* 



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

 by M. M. Hebert and Lartet, names well known to Science, who 

 have also this year gone into this enquiry on the spot, may thus 

 be stated. We are by no means prepared to maintain that the 

 specimen in the museum at Le Puy, (which unfortunately was 

 never seen in situ by 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 bones, is a lighter, 

 and much more porous stone, without lamination, to which we 

 could find nothing similar in the Mountain of Benise, although 

 both M. Hebert and I, made several excavations on the alleged 

 site of the fossils. M. Hebert therefore su2ro;ested to me that this 

 more porous stone which resembles in colour and mineral compo- 

 sition, though not in structure, parts of the genuine old breccia of 

 Denise, may be made up of the older rock broken up and after- 

 wards re-deposited, or as the French say ' remane,' and therefore 

 of much newer date. — An hypothesis which well deserves conside- 

 ration but I feel that we are at present so ignorant of the precise 

 circumstances and position under which these celebrated human 

 fossils were found, that I ought not to waste time in speculating 

 on their probable mode of interment, but simply declare that in 

 my opinion they afibrd no demonstration of Man having witnessed 

 the last volcanic eruptions of Central France. The skulls, accord- 

 ing to the judgment of the most competent osteologists who have 

 yet seen them, do not seem to depart in a marked manner from the 

 modern European, or Caucasian type, and the human bones are 

 in a fresher state than those of the Elepkas meridionalis and other 

 quadrupeds found in any breccia of Denise which can be referred 

 to the period even of the latest volcanic eruptions. 



But while I have thus failed to obtain satisfactory evidence in 

 favour of the remote origin assigned to the human fossils of Le 

 Puy, I am fully prepared to corroborate the conclusions which have 

 been recently laid before the Royal Society by Mr Prestwich, in 

 regard to the age of the flint implements associated in undisturbed 

 gravel, in the north of France, with the bones of Elephants, at 

 Abbeville, and Amiens. These were first noticed at Abbeville, 

 and their true geological position assigned to them by M. Boucher 



