

ETHNOLOGY AND ANTHEOPOLOGY. 



377 



such as lions, hyasnas, elephants, rhinoceroses, 

 &c., extinct far beyond the reach of human 

 records, then goes on to account for the scar- 

 city of remains of man himself in connection 

 with his works, hy the following considera- 

 tions : In the savage state, man would be few 

 in number in comparison with the wild animals ; 

 and when he first appeared, unarmed, without 

 language, and before he had even yet acquired 

 the art of kindling a fire, the disparity would 

 be still greater. In that condition he would 

 have to contend for life and food with savage 

 beasts, with nothing to depend on but a superior 

 'brain and' the capacity of wielding a club. In 

 such circumstances the wonder is, not that man 

 lould be few, but that he should continue to 

 dst at all. 



Having thus found, as precisely as possible, 

 limits downward into the fossiliferous 

 trata, and (the Neanderthal skull only being 

 jgarded as yet not decided on) backward in 

 the ages of time to which man appears with 

 some degree of certainty to have been traced, 

 up to the close of the year 1862, we are now 

 repared better to appreciate the bearings and 

 significance of two discoveries which have 

 larked the year 1863, namely, the finding of 

 ?hat is (by many) believed to be a fossil hu- 

 man jaw in the Post-pliocene alluvium of the 

 Somme valley, and the finding at St. Prest, by 

 M. Desnoyers, of marked fossil bones of animals 

 within what he regards as unquestionably up- 

 tertiary, or Pliocene, strata. Before de- 

 cribing these, certain speculations assigning 

 an extreme antiquity to the exceptional skull 

 above named, will be given. 



The Neanderthal Man. Prof. Win. King 

 3ad before the Brit. Assoc. a paper upon this 

 ibject. He gave reasons for believing that 

 lis skull belonged to one of a race existing in 

 le glacial or Olydian period. Why should there 

 lot have been, in the past, distinct low species 

 rf man, little above the anthropoid apes ? Why 

 not a pliocene or Clydian species, which could 

 erect a protecting shed, fashion a stone imple- 

 lent, and store up food, and yet be devoid of 

 seech, and of religious feeling. He considered 

 e Neanderthal skull eminently simial in its 

 sat characters ; and it was probable that the 

 loughts and desires that dwelt in it never 

 ired above those of the brute. The Andaman 

 slander has but the dimmest consciousness of 

 existence of a Creator, and of any moral 

 eeling. Still he has enough [Dr. "Mouatt de- 

 clares that he has no religious ideas or feelings 

 whatever : if this be true, he at least has suffi- 

 cient capacity for such notion and feeling] to 

 necessitate our classing him with Homo sapiens. 

 We could go no lower than the Andamaner, 

 without coming to brute benightedness. He 

 believed the Neanderthal man to have been, 

 accordingly, a being specifically distinct ; and 

 he would propose for him the designation of 

 Homo Neanderthalensis. 



The Moulin- Quignon, or Abbeville Jaw. A 

 notice of the discovery of human remains in a 



gravel-bed at Moulin- Qnignon, near Abbeville, 

 in the north of France, and by workmen en- 

 gaged in quarrying at the place, first appeared 

 in " VAbbevillois," of April 9th, 1863. Near the 

 end of March, a quarryman,* named Halatre, 

 brought from this quarry to M. Boucher de 

 Perthes a shaped flint and a fragment of bone, 

 both stated to have been found in the gravel. 

 Upon clearing away the sand in which the 

 latter was partly imbedded, it proved to be a 

 human molar, somewhat damaged. M. Boucher 

 at once proceeded to Moulin-Quignon with 

 Halatre, verified the spot from which the tooth 

 had been taken, ascertained that that part of 

 the gravel deposit was free from infiltration or 

 intrusion, and desired the search continued. 

 He charged the workmen not to disturb any- 

 thing they might come upon during his absence, 

 but if any remains came to light, to let him 

 know of the fact. On the 28th of March, a 

 workman named Vasseur came to tell him that 

 something resembling a bone was to be seen in 

 the bed of gravel. 



M. Boucher went to the place, and there 

 found, enveloped in its matrix, and still in part 

 imbedded in the gravel, a bone, nearly an inch 

 in length of which, however, was already ex- 

 posed. The bone was carefully extracted whole, 

 by working round it with a pickaxe ; and it 

 proved to be a portion of a human jaw, very 

 much discolored, but not injured by rolling. 

 A few inches off from it was a flint hatchet 

 (hache), also imbedded in the gravel, whence 

 M. O. Dimpre by aid of the pickaxe removed it. 

 All the spectators were struck with the perfect 

 identity of the platina or colored crust which 

 covered not only the jaw and the flint axe, but 

 also the rolled pebbles of the bed ; the color of 

 this was a brown approaching to bluish black. 

 The. portion of the deposit from which the jaw 

 and accompanying flint were taken, was a hori- 

 zontal stratum or seam of no great depth, inter- 

 posed between the chalk below and the ordi- 

 nary gravel above, consisting of a black man- 

 gano-ferruginous matter. This deposit belongs 

 to what Mr. Prestwich calls the " high-level " 

 series, being regarded as the oldest of the 

 Somme valley beds. The jaw and hache were 

 found at a depth of five yards below the surface. 



A few days after the distovery of the jaw, 

 Messrs. Prestwich, Evans, and Tylor visited M. 

 Boucher. The two letter especially observed 

 circumstances which led them to fear that a 

 deception had fceen practised by the quarrymen. 

 Mr. Evans thought that the axes, purporting to 

 be from the black band, had been artificially 

 stained with the irony deposit. M. Boucher 

 still maintained a different view of the case. 

 He had extracted the jaw from the substance 

 of the bed itself, and declared that M. Dimpre 

 had taken out the hache in the same way, both 

 in presence of a number of spectators ; and they 

 felt sure the gravel had not been disturbed. He 

 considered the two workmen concerned to be 

 persons of irreproachable character. Yet it was 

 a fact that M. Boucher had for years offered large 



