EARLY VKSTKiKS OF MAN. 2.23 



ranoously with the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros; and 

 rude implements manufactured from flint have been found asso- 

 ciated with remains of these animals in caves and gravel-beds ; 

 and drawings have been observed on the bones of animals 

 found in the drift which were probably scratched by the hand 

 of Man. 



From the investigations of Sir Charles Lyell, who has given 

 a clear and admirable summary of the results obtained in his 

 time, it appears that the most ancient remains of Man * were 



* Sir Charles Lyell, 'Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man,' 

 London, 1863. The Vertebrata of the Tertiary epoch, and even those of its 

 uppermost Pliocene division, are quite different from those of the present 

 dav. Prof. Heer therefore regards it as extremely improbable and contrary 

 to all analogy that Man should have, at that time, existed upon the earth. 

 Moreover no single fact can be adduced in favour of this opinion. It is 

 quite otherwise with the Drift-period. This offers us plants and animals 

 identical with those now living ; and even among the most highly organized 

 animals, the Mammalia, we find living species coexisting with types now 

 extinct. The occurrence of Man at this period, therefore, cannot surprise us ; 

 and his first appearance may have taken place at its very beginning. This, 

 however, is not yet proved ; and a careful examination of the facts hitherto 

 ascertained shows that the first traces of Man in Europe coincide with the 

 Postglacial period. From strire and furrows observed upon bones of Elephas 

 meridionalis in an anteglacial deposit of gravel at St. Prest, near Chartres, 

 Desuoyers regarded these marks as due to the hand of Man, and concluded 

 that Man existed before the Glacial epoch. But these striae and furrows might 

 just as well have been produced by predaceous animals in gnawing the bones, 

 as has been pointed out by Lyell (Appendix to the third edition of the ' An- 

 tiquity of Man,' p. 1 ct seq.^) ; and as no other indications of the presence 

 of Man occur in the locality, this opinion of Sir Charles Lyell seems much 

 more probable. 



In the interglacial lignites there seems to be a nearer approach to certainty 

 of real traces of man. M. Riitimeyer has received, from Wetzikon, lignites 

 iii which are found four pointed rods ; and he is of opinion that these rods 

 received their points from the hands of human beings. This circumstance, 

 according to Professor Heer, only forms a feeble and doubtful evidence of the 

 existence of Man in the interglacial epoch, especially as previous researches, 

 conducted during fifty years, had not led to any other traces of Map in Swiss 

 lignites. E. Collomb (Bibliotheque Universelle, July 18GO) has endeavoured 

 to prove that the drift of the Somme (which contains the flint implements of 

 which so much has been said) was deposited before the Glacial epoch. He 

 has compared it with the gravel-beds of the Yosges, which are covered by 

 moraines, and founds his inference upon this comparison : but Prof. Desor 



