FOSSIL REMAINS OF MAN. 157 



garded as affording a certain mark of distinction between 

 bones mixed with the diluvium at a somewhat later period 

 and the true diluvial relics, to which alone it was supposed 

 that these deposits were confined. But I have long been 

 convinced that neither can the absence of d^ndrites be 

 regarded as indicative of recent age, nor their presence as 

 sufficient to establish the great antiquity of the objects 

 upon which they occur. I have myself noticed upon 

 paper, which could scarcely be more than a year old, den- 

 dritic deposits, which could not be distinguished from 

 those on fossil bones. Thus I possess a dog's skull from 

 the Roman colony of the neighbouring Heddersheim, 

 Ciistrum Hadrianum, which is in no way distinguishable 

 from the fossil bones from the Frankish caves ; it presents 

 the same colour, and adheres to the tongue just as they 

 do ; so that this character also, which, at a former meeting 

 of German naturalists at Bonn, gave rise to amusing 

 scenes between Buckland and Schmerling, is no longer of 

 any value. In disputed cases, therefore, the condition of 

 the bone can scarcely afford the means for determining 

 with certainty whether it be fossil, that is to say, whether 

 it belong to geological antiquity or to the historical 

 period." 



As we cannot now look upon the primitive world as 

 representing a wholly different condition of things, from 

 which no transition exists to the organic life of the present 

 time, the designation of fossil as applied to a bone, has no 

 longer the sense it conveyed in the time of Cuvier. Suffi- 

 cient grounds exist for the assumption that man coexisted 

 with the animals found in the diluvium ; and many a 

 barbarous race may, before all historical time, have disap- 

 peared together with the animals of the ancient world, 

 whilst the races whose organization is improved have con- 

 tinued the genus. The bones which form the subject of 



