68 SCHMEELING ON ANTIQUITY OF MAN. CHAP. iv. 



me his splendid collection, and when I expressed some 

 incredulity respecting the alleged antiquity of the fossil 

 human bones, he pointedly remarked, that if I doubted their 

 having been contemporaneous with the bear or rhinoceros, 

 on the ground of man being a species of more modern date, 

 I ought equally to doubt the coexistence of all the other 

 living species, such as the red deer, roe, wild cat, wild boar, 

 wolf, fox, weasel, beaver, hare, rabbit, hedgehog, mole, dor 

 mouse, field-mouse, water-rat, shrew, and others, the bones 

 of which he had found scattered everywhere indiscriminately 

 through the same mud with the extinct quadrupeds. The 

 year after this conversation I cited Schmerling's opinions, 

 and the facts bearing on the antiquity of man, in the 3rd 

 edition of my Principles of Geology (p. 161, 1834), and in 

 succeeding editions, without pretending to call in question 

 their trustworthiness, but at the same time without giving 

 them the weight which I now consider they were entitled 

 to. He had accumulated ample evidence to prove that man 

 had been introduced into the earth at an earlier period than 

 geologists were then willing to believe. 



One positive fact, it will be said, attested by so competent a 

 witness, ought to have outweighed any amount of negative 

 testimony, previously accumulated, respecting the non-occur 

 rence elsewhere of human remains in formations of the like 

 antiquity. In reply, I can only plead that a discovery which 

 seems to contradict the general tenor of previous investiga 

 tions is naturally received with much hesitation. To have un 

 dertaken in 1832, with a view of testing its truth, to follow the 

 Belgian philosopher through every stage of his observations 

 and proofs, would have been no easy task even for one well- 

 skilled in geology and osteology. To be let down, as Schmer- 

 ling was, day after day, by a rope tied to a tree, so as to slide 

 to the foot of the first opening of the Engis cave,* where the 



* Sclimerling, part i. p. 30. 



