^±ntiquity of the Human Race. 71 



while some caves have also served as the channels through which 

 the waters of flooded rivers have flowed, so that the remains of 

 living beings which have peopled the district at more than one era 

 may have subsequently been mingled in such caverns and confound- 

 ed together in one and the same deposit. The facts, however 

 recently brought to light during the systematic investigation, as 

 reported on by Falconer, of the Brixham Cave, must, I think, 

 have prepared you to admit that scepticism in regard to the cave, 

 evidence in :^xvor of the antiquity of man had previously been 

 pushed to an extreme. To escape from what I now consider was 

 a legitimate deduction from the facts already accumulated, we were 

 obliged to resort to hypotheses requiring great changes in the rela_ 

 tive levels and drainage of valle3'S, and, in short, the whole physi_ 

 cal geography of the respective regions where the caves are situated 

 — changes that would alone imply a remote antiquity for the 

 human fossil remains, and makes it probable that man was old 

 enouo;h to have coexisted, at least, with the Siberian mammoth 

 But, in the course of the last fifteen years, another class of proofg 

 have been advanced, in France, in confirmation of man's antiquity 

 into two of which I have personally examined in the course of the 

 present summer, and to which I shall now briefly advert. First, 

 so long ago as the year 1844, M. Aymard, an eminent palasontolo- 

 gist and antiquary, published an account of the discovery in the 

 volcanic district of Central France, of portions of two human skele- 

 tons (the skulls, teeth, and bones), embedded in a volcanic breccia 

 found in the mountain of Denise, in the environs of Le Puy en 

 Velay, a breccia anterior in date to one at least, of the latest erup- 

 tions of that volcanic mountain. On the opposite side of the same 

 hill, the remains of a large number of mammalia, most of them of 

 extinct species, have been detected in tufaceous strata believed, and, 

 I think, correctly, to be of the same age. The authenticity of the 

 human fossils was from the first disputed by several geologists, but 

 admitted by the majority of those who visited Le Puy and saw, 

 with their own eyes, the original specimen now in the museum of 

 that town. Among others, M. Pictet, so well known to you by 

 his excellent work on palaeontology, declared after his visit to the 

 spot, his adhesion to the opinions previously expressed by Aymard, 

 My friend, Mr. Scrope, in the second edition of his volcanoes of 

 Central France, lately published, also adopted the same conclusion 

 although after accompanying me this year to Le Puy, he has seen 

 reason to modify his views. The result of our joint examination, 



