A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



in the Broxham Cave, I arrived at the conviction that 

 they were of contemporaneous age, although I was not 

 prepared to go along with M. de Perthes in all his in- 

 ferences regarding the hieroglyphics and in an indus- 

 trial interpretation of the various other objects which 

 he had met with." 4 



That Dr. Falconer was much impressed by the col- 

 lection of M. de Perthes is shown in a communication 

 which he sent at once to his friend Prestwich : 



"I have been richly rewarded," he exclaims. "His 

 collection of wrought flint implements, and of the ob- 

 jects of every description associated with them, far 

 exceeds everything I expected to have seen, especially 

 from a single locality. He has made great additions, 

 since the publication of his first volume, in the second, 

 which I now have by me. He showed me flint hatchets 

 which he had dug up with his own hands, mixed indis- 

 criminately with molars of elephas primigenius. I ex- 

 amined and identified plates of the molars and the 

 flint objects which were got along with them. Abbe- 

 ville is an out-of-the-way place, very little visited ; and 

 the French savants who meet him in Paris laugh at 

 Monsieur de Perthes and his researches. But after de- 

 voting the greater part of a day to his vast collection, 

 I am perfectly satisfied that there is a great deal of fair 

 presumptive evidence in favor of many of his specula- 

 tions regarding the remote antiquity of these industrial 

 objects and their association with animals now extinct. 

 M. Boucher's hotel is, from the ground floor to garret, a 

 continued museum, filled with pictures, mediaeval art, 

 and Gaulish antiquities, including antediluvian flint- 



100 



