THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL WORK OF PRINCE ALBERT I 

 OF MONACO, AND THE RECENT PROGRESS OF HUMAN 

 PALEONTOLOGY IN FRANCE 1 



(The Huxley Memorial Lecture for 1922) 



By Mabcelun Boule 



Professor in the Muse'um national cl'Histoire naturelle, Director of the Institut 

 de PaUontologie humaine 



I have hesitated long over the choice of a subject to discuss before 

 you. I am not an anthropologist in the strict sense of the term. 

 My scientific equipment is rather in the domain of geology and of 

 paleontology. It is through these two sciences that I have been led 

 to take up anthropology. Since man is known in the fossil state, his 

 earliest history will be revealed necessarily and directly through 

 geology and paleontology, and will be revealed only through them. 



It is your illustrious predecessors, Lyell, Prestwich, Falconer, 

 Huxley, John Evans, who, following in the train of, and so to speak, 

 coming to the aid of our great precursors, Tournal, Boucher de 

 Perthes, Noulet, Lartet, have placed the problem of fossil man in its 

 true perspective ; it is their work which has thrown the first light on 

 the great problems of geology and quaternary paleontology. The 

 geological observations of Lyell and of Prestwich, the paleontological 

 discussions of Falconer and of Mr. Boyd Dawkins, the anatomical 

 and philosophical observations of Huxley, and the archeological 

 speculations of Lubbock and of John Evans have lost nothing of 

 their value, although the younger generations are showing too great 

 a tendency to forget them. 



I should have liked to discuss the underlying reasons for the de- 

 velopment of that fine group of British scientific men devoted to solv- 

 ing the great problem of our origin by the most varied methods, a 

 group whose ranks are still far from complete, as is shown by the 

 discoveries and investigations of every kind accomplished by you and 

 in your country in recent years. I feel that these are correlated, at 

 least in large part, with the geographical and geological environment. 

 All of the geological systems that are elsewhere isolated are found 



1 Translated, by permission, from the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of 

 Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. LIT, July to December, 1922. 



495 



