Reviews — Alphonse Favre's Fossil Man. 375 



II. — The Existence of Man in the Tertiakt Epoch, 



By Alphonse Favre. 



[De I'Existence de I'Homme a I'Epoque Tertiaire. Tire des Archives des Sciences 

 de la Bibliotheque Universelle, Fevrier, 1870.] 



THE aim of this paper is to bring down the Stone age to the 

 Tertiary period. The author observes that so far as the climatal 

 conditions of Tertiary times are concerned, no difficulty presents 

 itself, as they were favourable to the existence of man. If he did 

 exist at so remote a period, he would have been associated with a 

 fauna and flora very different from those of the present time, and he 

 mast then be classed with those genera that have existed during two 

 successive geological epochs. We must not therefore be surprised 

 at the caution of scientific men in receiving these new views ; the 

 scientific man is nothing imless sceptical. 



Passing on to the facts of the case, M. Favre mentions that so long 

 ago as 1863, M. Desnoyers communicated to the Academy of Sciences 

 some observations made at Saint-Prest, near Chartres, in which the 

 occurrence of human works in Pliocene deposits was pointed out. 

 M. Desnoyers found a large number of bones in stratified sand of 

 fluviatile appearance, and mixed with flint-gravel. The bones, as 

 determined by M. Lartet, are the following : Elephas meridionalis, 

 BJiinoceros etruscus, Hippopotamus major (?), Equus Arnensis, Cervus 

 Carnutorum and two other species of Cervus, Bos, and Trogontherium 

 Cuvieri. These fossils and the sands in which they were embedded 

 have been classed as of Upper Tertiary or Pliocene age. M. Desnoyers 

 observed on the surface of these bones certain scratches, varying in 

 form, length, and depth, and passing over the edge, which he thought 

 could not be accidental, and led him to imagine that they had been 

 made by flint-blades, and, in fact, by the hand of man. From these 

 facts he concludes that man co-existed with the Eleplias meridionalis, 

 and other Pliocene species. The age of the deposits is undoubted, 

 but not so the cause of the markings found on the bones. Sir Charles 

 Lyell gave some bones to pigs to gnaw, and found the markings made 

 by their teeth to be very similar to these alleged human scratches, and 

 he therefore concluded that they were made by the great Beaver, or 

 some other animal. 



However, some more unequivocal evidence than the scratched 

 bones was soon found; for in 1867 M. I'Abbe Bourgeois announced 

 to the Academy that he had found in these sands of Saint-Prest 

 worked flints, such as lance or arrow-heads, stampers, scrapers, etc. 

 These flints were much more rudely worked than those of Amiens 

 or Abbeville. Soon after, M. Bourgeois announced the discovery of 

 worked flints, not only in Miocene marls, but also below the Beauce 

 limestone, which is older. He found these flints in nearly all the 

 beds separating this ancient deposit from the Alluvium, as can be 

 seen in a section at Thenay, near Pont Levoy, Department of Loir- 

 et-Cher. 



Many scientific men refuse to believe that these flints are of human 

 workmanship. On the other hand, many assert that they are genuine 



