H. Woodward — Man and the Mammoth. 59 



Let us for a moment retrace the course of these events. So long 

 ago as 1823, that distinguished British geologist, Dr. Buckland, 

 published his celebrat.ed work, the " Beliquice Diluviance," in which 

 he described the organic remains contained in ossiferous caverns and 

 fissures, and " diluvial gravel " in various parts of Europe. But the 

 Dean, although so acute a geologist, concluded that none of the stone 

 implements or human remains met with in these deposits could h& 

 considered to be as old as the Mammoth and other extinct and foreign 

 animals, with the bones and teeth of which they were associated. 



So little was the study of Geology then understood, that the idea 

 of any remains of man being found in deposits older than those at- 

 tributed to the Noachian deluge was rejected as contrary to Scripture, 

 and generally received opinion. 



At this early period, however, 1824, the late Eev. Dr. John 

 Fleming, F.E.S.E., at that time a minister in the Scotch Presby- 

 terian Church, (afterwards Professor of Natural Philosophy in Aber- 

 deen, and latterly Professor of Natural History at New College, 

 Edinburgh,) contributed an article to the " Edinburgh Philosophical 

 Joiu'nal," vol. si., 1824, " On the Influence of Society on the Distri- 

 bution of British Animals," in which he ably argued against the 

 views of Dr. Buckland, and showed (even from the then com- 

 paratively scanty evidences) that there was incontestible proof of the 

 contemporaneity of the human and animal relics found associated 

 together in these cave-deposits, and that they were clearly the 

 remains of the former denizens of the same region, entombed in 

 their present burial places by similar causes to those now in action, 

 and not by any wide-sweej^ing catastrophe, such as was assumed by 

 the advocates of a universal deluge. 



There was (1824-5) a highly intelligent Eoman Catholic Priest 

 living at Torquay, the Eev. J. McEnery, who, having examined a 

 certain cavern, known as " Kent's Hole," discovered flint implements 

 of undoubted human workmanship associated with bones of the 

 Mammoth, the tichorhine Ehinoceros, cave-bear, and other mam- 

 malia, about the contemporaneity of which he does not seem to have 

 doubted, and the correctness of whose views have been now well- 

 established by subsequent investigation. 



The next (1833-4) earliest systematic work of exploration we 

 find was carried out in the valley of the Meuse, Belgium, by the 

 late Dr. Schmerling, of Liege, who carefully searched for and 

 exhumed the fossil human and animal remains buried together in 

 the ossiferous caverns around Liege, an account of forty of which he 

 published, with figm-es and descriptions of their buried contents. 



In 1841 M. Boucher de Perthes commenced to collect, and, in 

 1847, to publish the result of his researches in the gravel-deposits of 

 the valley of the Somme, around Abbeville, and the sight of his col- 

 lection of flint-implements induced Dr. Eigollot to search the gravel- 

 pits around Amiens, which also yielded singular proofs of pre- 

 historic man. Notwithstanding the publication of these discoveries, 

 however, public interest was not as j^et aroused, and the French savans 

 of Paris only laughed at Monsieur de Perthes and his researches. 



Meanwhile English geologists were accumulating facts and ma- 



