A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



species now living, and most of them still common in 

 the same neighborhood, and also with the remains of 

 various mammalia a few species now living, but more 

 of extinct forms. 



" Fourth. That the period at which their entomb- 

 ment took place was subsequent to the bowlder-clay 

 period, and to that extent post-glacial; and also that 

 it was among the latest in geological time one ap- 

 parently anterior to the surface assuming its present 

 form, so far as it regards some of the minor features." 8 



These reports brought the subject of the very sig- 

 nificant human fossils at Abbeville prominently before 

 the public ; whereas the publications of the original dis- 

 coverer, Boucher de Perthes, bearing date of 1847, had 

 been altogether ignored. A new aspect was thus given 

 to the current controversy. 



As Dr. Falconer remarked, geology was now passing 

 through the same ordeal that astronomy passed in the 

 age of Galileo. But the times were changed since the 

 day when the author of the Dialogues was humbled be- 

 fore the Congregation of the Index, and now no Index 

 Librorum Prohibitorum could avail to hide from eager 

 human eyes such pages of the geologic story as Nature 

 herself had spared. Eager searchers were turning the 

 leaves with renewed zeal everywhere, and with no small 

 measure of success. In particular, interest attached 

 just at this time to a human skull which Dr. Fuhlrott 

 had discovered in a cave at Neanderthal two or three 

 years before a cranium which has ever since been 

 famous as the Neanderthal skull, the type specimen of 

 what modern zoologists are disposed to regard as a 



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