April 20, 1876] 



NA TURE 



485 



Lane-Fox. No flint implctiunts have been found in Egypt in 

 association with an extinct fauna^ or in beds corresponding tn geo' 

 logical position to the implement-bearing gravels 0/ the Somme 

 valley. 



2. " W. B. D." asserts that in every one of the cases cited by 

 me (I cite one or two hundred) to prove "the ages'' simul- 

 taneous, " there is no proof that the deposit has not been dis- 

 turbed." 



I select by way of reply five examples : the pile-village at 

 Unter Uhldingen (Switzerland) ; the skeletons found at Cuma- 

 rola, in Italy ; the trenches at Alise ; the pile-\'illage near Lul)- 

 tow, in Pomerania ; and the relic-beds at Hissarhk. 



3. Solutre is a crucial case. Referring to this, " W. B. D." 

 dioposes of it by remarking that a Merovingian cemetery was 

 planted here on a palaeolithic station, "as he was informed by 

 Dr. Broca at the French Association at Lyons in 1873." "In 

 this case," he proceeds, " which is made the basis of the attack 

 on the high antiquity of palreolithic men, the human skulls are 

 comparatively modem, and the refuse heap of an untold age." 



This statement implies both ignorance and a treacherous 

 memory on the part of " \V. B. D." 



We are all aware that there are Merovingian remains at 

 Solutre. There are also Roman or Gallo- Roman remains. But 

 the argument from Solutre is this : (i) That the bones of the 

 extinct animals found in association with the flint implements 

 have preserved a portion of their gelatine, and that the horns of 

 the reindeer, when cut, yield the odour of fresh horn, (2) That 

 the flint implements found, though unpolished, are of very 

 superior and advanced workmanship, hardly inferior to the 

 beautiful specimens from Denmark. (3) That there are found 

 here the remains of some 40,000 horses, and that the horse was 

 probably domesticated. (4) That there are numerous instru- 

 ments here of palaeolithic date, some of them in carefully closed 

 stone cists or boxes. The remark of " \V. B. D." about the 

 Merovingian graves has therefore no application except in connec- 

 tion with (3) and (4) ; as regards (3), the hone-deposit, as it is 

 called (outside of the refuse-heaps), some of which was compacted 

 into a solidified mass — contained the flint implements and the 

 bones of the mammoth, reindeer, &c. ; and, in addition, extended 

 beneath the most ancient fire-places, or hearths, containmg the 

 paleolithic skeletons and the flints and the bones of the reindeer 

 and mammoth. The horse-remains are not, therefore, Mero- 

 vingian. As regards (4), and the assertion, on the authority of 

 Dr. Broca, that the graves are Merovingian ; this whole subject 

 came up at the French Association at Lyons in 1873 ; the Asso- 

 ciation visited Soluire ; and by way of reply to what " W. B. D." 

 says he gathered from Dr. Broca, I quote from the report of the 

 Proceedings of the Association in " Materiaux pour THistoire de 

 I'Homme," 7^ 8% and 9* Livraisons, 1873, PP- 324, 325, 342. 

 When M. CartaiJhac observed that "the discussion was of the 

 greatest gravity, and would remain celebrated in the history of 

 anthropological science," and that although there may have been 

 some disturbances of the soil, "one thing remained certain, viz., 

 that in more than ten instances, a human skeleton had been 

 found on a quaternary fire-place, and not one fact exists to be 

 opposed to the admission of their contemporaneity " — when M. 

 Cartailhac had expressed himself to this effect, the report 

 proceeds : — 



" M. Broca partagc cette opinion et declare ouverte la discus- 

 sion sur le deuxieme probleme : les chevaux. " 



Subsequently, participating further in the discussion (p. 342), 

 M. Broca stated that he had examined twenty-five skulls from 

 Solutre, and that of this number seventeen belonged to the 

 epoch of the reindeer — "a la veritable epoque paleoUthique 

 solutreenne." 



I leave " W. B. D." to reconcile these declarations of Dr. 

 Broca made in the public meeting with the private declarations 

 made to him. "W, B. D." closes with the remark that "he 

 has not been able to find [in the book] a single shred of proof of 

 the recent origin of man." 



I show that the lake-dwellings in France come down to the 

 eighth century of our era ; in Pomerania and Sweden to the 

 eleventh century. I show that great changes of level have 

 occurred m different parts of the earth within a comparatively 

 recent period, as at Uddenalla and Sodutalje in Sweden, and in 

 the island of Moen. 



I show that in America the remains of the mastodon and 

 mammoth occur in the most superficial deposits — the food some- 

 times preserved in the stomach ; I refer to the preservation of 

 the Mammoth in Siberia ; I show that the reindeer and Great 

 Irish Elk lived in Europe down to the Middle Ages ; that the I 



Cave-bear survived to Neolithic times. Sec. I show that the 

 hippopotamus is figured in the Trojan bed at Hissarhk ; that the 

 lion was found in Europe three centuries before our era ; that the 

 rhinoceros is found in the neolithic caverns of Gibraltar ; that 

 the elephant was brought to Shalmaneser II. by the Miizri in 

 the eighth century B.C. I might have added that the elephant 

 lived in Mauritania {near the Straits of Gibraltar) in the time of 

 Herodotus and Pliny. 



I pomt out that, owing to the continuance of the ice-sheet, 

 palccolithic man never penetrated into Scotland or Denmark ; 

 but that the human period there commences with the Neolithic 

 age, which, interpreted, means that the Glacial epoch in that 

 region lasted down to the date of the older lake-duellings.^ 



James C, Southall 



Richmond, Virginia, U.S., March 20 



"The Unseen Universe" 

 Ix Art. 213 the distinguished authors of "The Unseen Uni- 

 verse " say : "We have already shown (Art. 164) that develop- 

 ment without life, that is dead development, does not tend to 

 produce uniformity of structure in the products which it gives 

 rise to. " 



In the article referred to they say : " There is one peculiarity 

 of the process of development now described which we beg our 

 readers to note. We have supposed the visible universe, after 

 its production, to have been left to its own laws, that is to say, 

 to certain inorganic agencies, which we call forces, in virtue of 

 which its development took place. At the very first there may 

 have been only one kind of primordial atom ; or, to use another 

 expression, perfect simplicity of material. 



"As, however, the various atoms approached each other in 

 virtue of the forces with which they were endowed, other and 

 more complicated structiu-es took the place of the perfectly simple 

 primordial stuff. Various molecules were produced at various 

 temperatures, and these ultimately came together to produce 

 globes or worlds, some of them comparatively small, others very 

 large. Thus the progress is from the regular to the irregular." 

 Is not this a «tf» sequiter? "And we find a simi ar progress 

 when we consider the inorganic development of our own world. 

 The action of water rounds pebbles, but it rounds them irregu- 

 larly ; it produces soil, but the soil is irregular in the size of its 

 grains, and variable in constitution. Wherever what may be 

 termed the brute forces of nature are left to themselves, this is 

 always the result ; not so, however, where organisms are con- 

 cerned in the development. 



" Two living thuigs in the same family are more like each other 

 than two grains of sand or two particles of soil. The ^gs of 

 birds of the same family, the similar feathers of similar birds, 

 the ants from the same ant-hill, have all a very strong likeness 

 to each other." It seems to me that the argument here tends to 

 show that the planetary or world development, and what the 

 authors term living development, are based on the same primor- 

 dial law. If development without life does not tend to produce 

 uniformity of structure in the products it gives rise to, and deve- 

 lopment with life does tend to the opposite result it would logi- 

 cally follow that the worlds with which we are acquainted are 

 the result of living development. 



No two living things of the same family are more alike than 

 are the planets of our solar system ; aMke in form, alike in their 

 motions, and alike in the material of which they are made ; and 

 if the doctrine of their growth, maturity, and final dissolution, 

 which the nebular hypothesis ascribes to them, be a verity, then 

 alike in these respects to living development on the earth. I 

 have long been of the opinion that the same principle underlies 

 all development from the smallest microscopic insect to the 

 largest world in the universe, and I am gratified to find two such 

 profound pliilosophers as Professors Stewart and Tait virtually 

 advancing the same theory. It may, however, be said that they 

 do not admit this sequence. They suppose the visible universe, 

 after its production, to have been left to its own laws, to certain 

 inorganic agencies or forces in virtue of which its developments 

 took place, that at first there may have been only one kind of 

 primordial atom from which all present development has arisen. 

 This is mere speculation ; but admitting its verity, it does not 

 alter the truths enunciated by them that dead development does 

 not tend to produce similarity of structure, that the results of the 

 brute forces of nature left to themselves are accidental forms, 

 and that where there is uniformity of structure there is living 

 development. 



^ Certainly not jo,ooo years ago ; in my opinion not 3,500. 



