16 
Mortillet, and pronounced to be unquestionably made by flint 
knives held by the human hand. Their conclusions are based on 
the most minute examination, which show: first, that the cuts 
are often in continuous curves or nearly circular, such as could — 
only have been made by the free sweep of a hand. Secondly, 
that examination under the microscope shows that they present a 
clean cut which could only have been made by a sharp instrument 
on the outer side, while the inner side is rough and abraded, as 
would be the case in hacking the flesh off the bone with a rude 
flint knife. Thirdly, that those features are identical with those 
on the undoubtedly human cuts on the bones from caverns, and 
with those now made by way of experiment on fresh bones with 
old palzolithic flint knives. Nor is this the only instance. 
Similar cuts have been found on the bones of the Elephas 
Meridionalis from the gravels of St. Prest, which Lyell pronounced 
after personal investigation to be those of a pliocene river, and 
the implements found by M. Rames in pliocene strata at Puy- 
Cournay, in Auvergne, have been pronounced by the Congress of 
French geologists to afford undoubted proof of the existence of 
tertiary man. The human origin of the famous implements 
found by the Abbé Bourgeois in miocene strata at Thenay, was 
long questioned but is now admitted, and the only remaining 
doubt is whether they are really found in situ by competent 
observers or may not have been attested by the workman from 
the surface or from higher strata—a theory which was at first 
preferred against the discoveries of Boucher-de-Perthes, but which 
in that case is quite obsolete. The Italian discoveries of imple- 
ments, and even of skulls and skeletons, in pliocene strata, seem 
to be well authenticated by careful and competent observers. 
ConcLusIvE TESTIMONY. 
But the new world would almost seem to be the old one, in the 
sense of supplying the largest and most conclusive evidence of the 
extreme antiquity of man. The human remains and implements 
which have been found in such numbers, and in so many places, 
in the auriferous gravels of California, all lie beneath the basaltic 
cap. The animal remains which are abundantly found beneath 
this cap are all of extinct species, including the auchenia and 
hipparion, and others entirely distinct from those that now in- 
habit any part of the North American continent. The hipparion 
alone seems conclusive as to the tertiary age of the deposits, for 
it carries the ancestral line of the horse one step further back 
than when the fossil horse first appears on the quaternary age. 
The vegetable remains found in the volcanic tuffs interstratified 
with the gravels beneath the basalt cap confirm this conclusion, 
for they are all distinct from the existing vegetation, and are con- 
sidered by Professor Lesquereaux to be pliocene with some 
affinity to miocene. The latest discovery, quite recently made in 
