378 



ETHNOLOGY AND ANTHKOPOLOGY. 



rewards for the discovery of fossil remains in 

 the quaternary deposits ; and equally so, that 

 the quarrymen had repeatedly brought to him 

 bones which proved not to be genuine. There 

 are, indeed, hone-bearing beds not far from 

 Abbeville. The quarrymen of Amiens and 

 Abbeville had begun to make sham " drift im- 

 plements " as soon as it paid them to do so, 

 and of such they had sold thousands. They 

 had acquired such skill as even to deceive in 

 regard to the coating or platina, and the dis- 

 coloration of the surface ; and Mr. Christy had 

 bought a large quantity of the spurious haches, 

 by insisting that he knew them to be such, for 

 from one to two pence apiece. 



An article by Mr. Falconer on the subject 

 of the supposed fossil bone appeared in the 

 London " Times," of April 25th. An animated 

 discussion had soon sprung up, touching the 

 questions as to whether or not the jaw was 

 authentic, and a true fossil ; and at length upon 

 the proposition (May 2d) of M. Lartet, a scien- 

 tific reunion or conference with a view to set- 

 tling these questions was determined on. Of 

 this, the French members were MM. Quatre- 

 fages, Lartet, Delesse, Desnoyers, and Milne- 

 Edwards, the last-named of whom acted as 

 President ; while M. 1'Abbe Bourgeois and M. 

 Gaudry also took part. The English deputies 

 were Messrs. Falconer and Busk, and Prof. 

 TV. B. Carpenter; and after the first sitting 

 also Mr. Prestwich. The members, with this 

 single exception, having reached Paris on the 

 9th of May, the sittings were commenced at 

 once, and were continued there during three 

 days. 



The jaw was sawn across, and washed ; the 

 section being made to include a portion of one 

 of the fangs of the solitary tooth remaining 

 in it. The matrix or black coating readily 

 washed off by means of a sponge ; there 

 was no appearance of dendrites upon the sur- 

 face or within the mass of the bone ; nor 

 was there any infiltration through it of min- 

 eral matter. The substance of the bone was 

 dry and triable, .but tolerably firm under the 

 saw; the section was -fresh-looking, and it 

 emitted distinctly the odor of sawn bone. The 

 surface after washing had a clear, mottled ap- 

 pearance, and was but slightly eroded. The 

 section of the fang of the molar yielded all the 

 characters of freshness, which had been pre- 

 viously observed in the "detached molar." 

 It was further noted that the black coating ma- 

 terial had not penetrated deeply into the dental 

 canal; and that the latter was lined with a 

 layer of fine gray sand, which appeared to in- 

 dicate a previous lodgment of the bone in a non- 

 ferruginous sandy bed. Mr. Busk thought the 

 bone like many cemetery bones, but quite un- 

 like fossil bones of the Sommo, from Menche- 

 court, &c., all of which that had been found 

 were covered and pervaded with dendrites. 

 Besides, it was found on trial that the material 

 of the gangue or matrix, applied soft to any 

 solid, would adhere with great tenacity; so 



that that upon the bone might be artificial. 

 Most, if not all, of the English members of the 

 Commission maintained that the flint haches 

 said to be yielded by the black band were un- 

 authentic ; and, finally, the confidence of some 

 of the French members of the Commission in 

 the fossil character of the jaw began to be 

 shaken. 



At this juncture (May 12th), upon the sugges- 

 tion of the President, the Commission adjourned 

 to Abbeville. There, after taking precautions 

 to avoid any deception, they made new excava- 

 tions into the cliff of the gravel-pit of Moulin- 

 Quignon, and in a bed apparently identical 

 with that from which the jaw had been ex- 

 tracted, at a depth of four metres below the 

 surface, there were disengaged under the very 

 eyes of the members many hatchets of flint 

 which were every way similar to those the 

 authenticity of which had just been questioned 

 by the English satans. Besides this, direct 

 testimony to the actual occurrence of the jaw 

 in the " black band" was brought forward to 

 the satisfaction of the Commission. 



Finally, while all the members agreed in re- 

 garding the jaw as authentic, there was not the 

 same unanimity in respect to its age. The 

 dissenting members handed in the following 

 notes : 



ABBEVILLE, May 13/A, 1S63. 



I am of opinion that the finding of the human ja\r 

 at Moulin-Quignon is authentic, but that the charac- 

 ters which it presents, taken in connection with the 

 conditions under which it lay, are not consistent with 

 the said jaw being of any great antiquity. 



H. FALCONER. 

 ABBEVILLE, May ISth, 1S63. 



Mr. Busk desires to add, that although he is of opin- 

 ion, judging from the external condition of the jaw, 

 and from other considerations of a more circumstan- 

 tial nature, that there is no longer reason to doubt that 

 the jaw was found in the situation and under the con- 

 ditions reported by M. Boucher de Perthes ; neverthe- 

 less, it appears to him that the internal condition of the 

 bone is wholly irreconcilable with an antiquity equal 

 to that assigned to the deposits in which it was found. 



It will be seen that there are still some 

 points to be cleared up in relation to the po- 

 sition and character of the supposed fossil 

 jaw, and that the question of its antiquity 

 remains open to discussion. "When commu- 

 nications detailing the proceedings and re- 

 sults of the conference upon it were, a few 

 days later, laid before the Academy of Sci- 

 ences, by MM. Milne Edwards and de Quatre- 

 fages, M. Elie de Beaumont objected to the 

 views arrived at, stating that in his opinion the 

 gravel deposit of Moulin-Quignon did not be- 

 long to the post- tertiary or diluvian age at all, 

 and that he would class it with " deposits laid 

 down upon hill-sides," consequently as more 

 recent than the diluvium, and in fact belonging 

 to the actual or modern period ; and he added 

 moreover a statement of his disbelief in the 

 asserted existence of man as a contemporary 

 of the extinct elephants, rhinoceroses, &c., of 

 the post-tertiary period. 



M. Milne Edwards, however without wish- 



