TRANSACTIONS OP THE SECTIONS. 93 



GEOLOGY. 

 Introductory Address by the President, Sir C. Lyell. 



On the Occurrence of Works of Human Art in Post-pliocene Deposits. 

 By Sir Charles Lyell, LL.D., D.C.L., F.R.S. 



No subject has lately excited more curiosity and general interest among geolo- 

 gists and the public than the question of the antiquity of the human race ; whether 

 or no we have sufficient evidence to prove the former co-existence of man with 

 certain extinct mammalia, in caves or in the superficial deposits commonly called 

 drift or " diluvium." For the last quarter of a century, the occasional occurrence, 

 in various parts of Europe, of the bones of man or the works of his hands, in cave- 

 breccias and stalactites associated with the remains of the extinct hyaena, bear, 

 elephant, or rhinoceros, has given rise to a suspicion that the date of man must 

 be carried further back than we had heretofore imagined. On the other hand, ex- 

 treme reluctance was naturally felt on the part of scientific reasoners to admit the 

 validity of such evidence, seeing that so many caves have been inhabited by a 

 succession of tenants, and have been selected by man, as a place not only of domicile, 

 but of sepulture, while some caves have also served as the channels through which 

 the waters of flooded rivers have flowed, so that the remains of living beings which 

 have peopled the district at more than one era may have subsequently been mingled 

 in such caverns and confounded together in one and the same deposit. The facts, 

 however, recently brought to light during the systematic investigation, as reported 

 on by Falconer, of the Brixham Cave, must, I think, have prepared you to admit 

 that scepticism in regard to the cave-evidence in favour of the antiquity of man 

 had previously been pushed to an extreme. To escape from what I now consider 

 was a legitimate deduction from the facts already accumulated, we were obliged to 

 resort to hypotheses requiring great changes in the relative levels and drainage of 

 valleys, and, in short, the whole physical geography of the respective regions where 

 the caves are situated — changes that woidd alone imply a remote antiquity for the 

 human fossil remains, and make it probable that man was old enough to have co- 

 existed, at least, with the Siberian mammoth. 



But, in the course of the last fifteen years, another class of proofs have been 

 advanced, in France, in confirmation of man's antiquity, into two of which I have 

 personally examined in the course of the present summer, and to which I shall 

 now briefly advert. First, so long ago as tbe year 1844, M. Aymard, an eminent 

 palaeontologist and antiquary, published an account of the discovery in the volcanic 

 district of Central France, of portions of two human skeletons (the skulls, teeth, 

 and bones), imbedded in a volcanic breccia, found in the mountain of Denise, in 

 the environs of Le Puy en Velay, a breccia anterior in date to one, at least, of the 

 latest eruptions of that volcanic mountain. On the opposite side of the same hill, 

 the remains of a large number of mammalia, most of them of extinct species, have 

 been detected in tutaceous strata, believed, and I think correctly, to be of the same 

 age. The authenticity of the human fossils was from the first disputed by several 

 geologists, but admitted by the majority of those who visited Le Puy and saw, 

 with their own eyes, the original specimen now in the museum of that town. 

 Among others, M. Pictet, so well known to you by his excellent work on Palaeonto- 

 logy, declared after his visit to the spot his adhesion to the opinions previously 

 expressed by Aymard. My friend, Mr. Scrope, in the second edition of his < Vol- 

 canoes of Central France," lately published, also adopted the same conclusion, 

 although, after accompanying me this year to Le Puy, he has seen reason to modify 

 his views. The result of our joint examination, — a result which, I believe, essen- 

 tially coincides with that arrived at by MM. Hebert and Lartet, (names well known 

 to science,) who have also this year gone into this inquiry on the spot, — may thus 

 be stated. We are by no means prepared to maintain that the specimen 'in the 

 museum at Le Puy (which unfortunately was never seen in situ by any scientific 

 observer) is a fabrication. On the contrary, we incline to believe that the human 

 fossils in this and some other specimens from the same hill, were really imbedded 



