NEW SCIENCE OF PALEONTOLOGY 



"In September of 1856 I made the acquaintance 

 of my distinguished friend M. Boucher de Perthes," 

 wrote Dr. Falconer, "on the introduction of M. Des- 

 noyers at Paris, when he presented to me the earlier 

 volume of his Antiques celtiques, etc., with which I thus 

 became acquainted for the first time. I was then fresh 

 from the examination of the Indian fossil remains of 

 the valley of the Jumna; and the antiquity of the hu- 

 man race being a subject of interest to both, we con- 

 versed freely about it, each from a different point of 

 view. M. de Perthes invited me to visit Abbeville, in 

 order to examine his antediluvian collection, fossil 

 and geological, gleaned from the valley of the Somme. 

 This I was unable to accomplish then, but I reserved 

 it for a future occasion. 



" In October, 1856, having determined to proceed to 

 Sicily, I arranged by correspondence with M. Boucher 

 de Perthes to visit Abbeville on my journey through 

 France. I was at the time in constant communica- 

 tion with Mr. Prestwich about the proofs of the an- 

 tiquity of the human race yielded by the Broxham 

 Cave, in which he took a lively interest ; and I engaged 

 to communicate to him the opinions at which I should 

 arrive, after my examination of the Abbeville collec- 

 tion. M. de Perthes gave me the freest access to his 

 materials, with unreserved explanations of all the facts 

 of the case that had come under his observation; and 

 having considered his Menchecourt Section, taken with 

 such scrupulous care, and identified the molars of ele- 

 phas primigenius, which he had exhumed with his own 

 hands deep in that section, along with flint weapons, 

 presenting the same character as some of those found 



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