CHAP. VIIT. ABSENCE OF HUMAN BONES EXPLAINED. 145 



equally, as yet, in all other parts of Europe where the tool- 

 bearing drift of the post-pliocene period has been investigated 

 in valley deposits. Yet in these same formations there is no 

 want of bones of mammalia belonging to extinct and living 

 species. In the course of the last quarter of a century, 

 thousands of them have been submitted to the examination 

 of skilful osteologists, and they have been unable to detect 

 among them one fragment of a human skeleton, not even a 

 tooth. Yet Cuvier pointed out long ago, that the bones of 

 man found buried in ancient battle-fields were not more de 

 cayed than those of horses interred in the same graves. We 

 have seen that in the Liege caverns, the skulls, jaws, and teeth, 

 with other bones of the human race, were preserved in the 

 same condition as those of the cave-bear, tiger, and mammoth. 



That ere long, now that curiosity has been so much excited 

 on this subject, some human remains will be detected in the 

 older alluvium of European valleys, I confidently expect. In 

 the mean time, the absence of all vestige of the bones which 

 belonged to that population by which so many weapons were 

 designed and executed, affords a most striking and instructive 

 lesson in regard to the value of negative evidence, when 

 adduced in proof of the non-existence of certain classes of 

 terrestrial animals at given periods of the past. It is a new 

 and emphatic illustration of the extreme imperfection of 

 the geological record, of which even they who are constantly 

 working in the field cannot easily form a just conception. 



We must not forget that Dr. Schmerling, after finding 

 extinct mammalia and flint tools in forty-two Belgian 

 caverns, was only rewarded by the discovery of human bones 

 in three or four of those rich repositories of osseous remains. 

 In like manner, it was not till the year 1855 that the first 

 skull of the musk buffalo (Bubalus moschatus) was detected 

 in the fossiliferous gravel of the Thames, and not till 1860, 

 as will be seen in the next chapter, that the same quadruped 



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