158 HUMAN FOSSILS III 



elusions fairly deducible from them, are points of 

 grave importance, but into the discussion of which 

 I do not, at present, propose to enter. It is 

 enough that such a view of the relations of extinct 

 to living beings has been propounded, to lead us 

 to inquire, with anxiety, how far the recent dis- 

 coveries of human remains in a fossil state bear 

 out, or oppose, that view. 



I shall confine myself, in discussing this question, 

 to those fragmentary Human skulls from the 

 caves of Engis in the valley of the Meuse, in 

 Belgium, and of the Neanderthal, near Diissel- 

 dorf, the geological relations of which have been 

 examined with so much care by Sir Charles Lyell ; 

 upon whose high authority I shall take it for 

 granted, that the Engis skull belonged to a 

 contemporary of the Mammoth (Elcphas primi- 

 gcnius) and of the woolly Rhinoceros (Rhinoceros 

 tichorhinus), with the bones of which it was found 

 associated ; and that the Neanderthal skull is of 

 great, though uncertain, antiquity. Whatever be 

 the geological age of the latter skull, I conceive it 

 is quite safe (on the ordinary principles of paleon- 

 tological reasoning) to assume that the former 

 takes us to, at least, the further side of the vague 

 biological limit, which separates the present 

 geological epoch from that which immediately 

 preceded it. And there can be no doubt that the 

 physical geography of Europe has changed 

 wonderfully, since the bones of Men and Mam- 



