TERTIARY MAN. 85 
M. Bourgeois presented the first ones found, to the congress of 1867. A 
few scrapers were then admitted to have been fashioned by human design, among 
those so agreeing being Messrs. Mortillet and Hamy. But when in 1873, M. 
Bourgeois presented some more new specimens found by him, to the same congress, 
opinions of their being the work of human hands, were much divided. But the 
scrapers were, however, recognized as genuine, some of them even presenting 
not only marks of fire, but have been shaped by aid of fire, the chipping having 
been employed only to correct the action of heat, and to modify the rough burnt 
forms. 
M. Mortillet, after this, formed of this epoch of the first recognized human 
labor, the epoch of the ‘‘ astonished stone ’””—in French, ‘‘ Pierre etonnee,”—~.e. 
astonished or split up. Some of the flint tools are deeply altered and seamed by 
this action, nevertheless we can not admit, except with repugnance that the 
beings who constructed these flint chippings, were masters of fire, and capable 
of lighting it, if even of using it. 
Were these beings in fact what we might call men? This question has been 
examined and discussed in all its different bearings by Messrs. Mortillet, Hove- 
lacque and Gaudry, the Paleontologist, and decided by them in the negative. 
It is known that animated beings on earth have followed a regular ascending 
scale, their most perfect developed forms, appearing in the order of succession 
_as a development of former inferior types. 
In all paleontological series, we do not see one group of highly organized 
beings appear on the arena before the appearance of an inferior ancestral group. 
Hence, this law by no means would prevent us from considering the makers 
of the flint tools of Thénay, to be considered ‘‘a priori” as human beings. 
The principal types of monkeys were already in existence in the middle 
miocene epoch ; the single species of which numerous remains are now known 
is the ‘‘ Mesopithecus Pentelici,” from Greece. This simian was highly devel- 
oped, and comes from the upper miocene. 
M. Lartet has discovered two anthropomorphous monkeys in the middle 
miocene. Hence, an ancestrial form nearly human, could very well have ap- 
peared in this same miocene epoch without interfering with the laws of evolu- 
tion. But there is not in the whole middle miocene, one species of mammifer 
identical with present species. 
All species of animals and plants have been changed on earth since that 
period, and there is nothing startling in this when we reflect on the enormous 
period of time that has elapsed since the middle miocene period. 
The Thénay flints occurred below strata that are middle miocene, that is 
the ‘‘ Calcaire de Beance,” then after this we have the upper miocene of Pikermi 
and of Vancleve; then we have the lower Pliocene; then follows the submerged 
forest bed of Cromer, in England; then above that the period of glacial boulder 
clays, of Norfolk; this to be followed by diluvium; then follows the Reindeer 
period ; lastly our present age, ‘‘ (Gaudry.)” 
