THE CENTURY'S PROGRESS IN PALEONTOLOGY 



This interesting find served to recall with fresh signifi- 

 cance some observations that had been made in France 

 and Belgium a long generation earlier, but whose bear- 

 ings had hitherto been ignored. In 1826 MM. Tournal 

 and Christol had made independent discoveries of what 

 they believed to be human, fossils in the caves of the 

 south of France ; and in 1827 Dr. Schmerling had 

 found in the cave of Engis, in Westphalia, fossil bones 

 jof even greater significance. Schmerling's explorations 

 had been made with the utmost care and patience. At 

 Engis he had found human bones, including skulls, in- 

 termingled with those of extinct mammals of the mam- 

 moth period in a way that left no doubt in his mind 

 that all dated from the same geological epoch. He had 

 published a full account of his discoveries in an elaborate 

 monograph issued in 1833. 



But at that time, as it chanced, human fossils were un- 

 der a ban as effectual as any ever pronounced by canonical 

 index, though of far different origin. The oracular voice 

 of Cuvier had declared against the authenticity of all hu- 

 man fossils. Some of the bones brought him for exam- 

 ination the great anatomist had pettishly pitched out of 

 the window, declaring them fit only for a cemetery, and 

 that had settled the matter for a generation : the evi- 

 dence gathered by lesser workers could avail nothing 

 against the decision rendered at the Delphi of Science. 

 But no ban, scientific or canonical, can long resist the 

 germinative power of a fact, and so now, after three 

 decades of suppression, the truth which Cuvier had 

 buried beneath the weight of his ridicule burst its 

 bonds, and fossil man stood revealed, if not as a flesh 

 and blood, at least as a skeletal entity. 



The reception now accorded our prehistoric ancestor 



111 



