PBEADAMITE MAN. 121 



many years previous to 1833, the late Dr. Schmerling, of 

 Liege, an ardent palaeontologist, caused himself to be let 

 down, day after day, by a rope into certain subterranean 

 caves, resembling in their general character those already 

 alluded to at Torquay and Brixham. He collected a large 

 quantity of osseous remains, mostly quadrupedal, but some 

 human ; and what is even more expressive, he found mingled 

 with those remains some well-fashioned flint implements, one 

 of them a hatchet. The animal bones comprised not only 

 those of the mammoth, the cave-bear, rhinoceros, and hyena 

 species all prehistorical but of the red-deer, roe, wild-cat, 

 wild-boar, wolf, weasel, fox, beaver, hare, rabbit, hedgehog, 

 mole, dormouse, field-mouse, water-rat, shrew, and other spe- 

 cies now extant. ' When,' writes Sir Charles Lyell, ' in 

 the year 1833, I passed through Liege on my way to the 

 Ehine, and conversed with Dr. Schmerling, who showed me 

 his splendid collection, and when I expressed some incre- 

 dulity 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 co-existence of all the other living species, 

 such as the red-deer, roe, wild-cat, boar, wolf, fox, weasel, 

 beaver, hare, rabbit, hedgehog, mole, dormouse, field-mouse, 

 water-rat, shrew, and others, the bones of which he had dis- 

 covered scattered everywhere indiscriminately/ The argu- 

 ment was irresistible, and the veteran geologist Sir Charles 

 Lyell testifies to the effect of it upon him. He cited Schmerl- 

 ing's opinions, he writes, without pretending to call in ques- 

 tion their trustworthiness, but, at the same time, without 

 giving them the weight which he now considers they were 

 entitled to. ' Schmerling/ now testifies Sir Charles, ' had 

 accumulated ample evidence to prove that man had been in- 

 troduced into the earth at an earlier period than geologists 

 were then willing to believe.' 



