NEW SCIENCE OF PALEONTOLOGY 



distinct species of man, Homo neanderthalensis . Like 

 others of the same type since discovered at Spy, it is 

 singularly simian in character low-arched, with re- 

 ceding forehead and enormous, protuberant eyebrows. 

 When it was first exhibited to the scientists at Berlin 

 by Dr. Fuhlrott, in 1857, its human character was 

 doubted by some of the witnesses; of that, however, 

 there is no present question. 



This interesting find served to recall with fresh sig- 

 nificance some observations that had been made in 

 France and Belgium a long generation earlier, but 

 whose bearings had hitherto been ignored. In 1826 

 MM. Tournal and Christol had made independent dis- 

 coveries 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 of even greater significance. 

 Schmerling' s explorations had been made with the 

 utmost care and patience. At Engis he had found 

 human bones, including skulls, intermingled with those 

 of extinct mammals of the mammoth 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 

 under 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 au- 

 thenticity of all human fossils. Some of the bones 

 brought him for examination the great anatomist h.-ul 

 pettishly pitched out of the window, declaring them 



VOL. in. a 103 



