G04 HUMAN JAW AND FLINT-IMPLEMENTS 



pected haches are modern fabrications, and thinks that he has 

 detected the proof of their having been introduced into the 

 gravel section. After detailing the results of his observation 

 he adds : ' There remains therefore not the slightest doubt 

 on my mind that a fraud, and a most ingenious and successful 

 one, has been practised by some of the Abbeville terrassiers.' 



Nor has the celebrated jaw itself had immunity from dis- 

 cussion conferred upon it by the verdict of the Conference. 

 An eminent French Anthropologist, M. Pruner-Bey, well 

 known for his familiarity with the characters which distin- 

 guish the races of mankind, has submitted the jaw to exa- 

 mination in the aspect of its natural history peculiarities, 

 and arrived at the opinion that, ' La mdchoire de Moulin- 

 Quignon appartenait a un individu brachycephale, de petite 

 taille, de l'age de pierre.' He found that it corresponded 

 with a Swiss lower jaw of the brachycephalous type, of the 

 age of iron in every respect, except that the coronoid process 

 in the latter was more elongated. M. Pruner-Bey does not 

 state to what division of the ' Stone-age ' the jaw is, in his 

 opinion, referable ; and his remarks do not necessarily remove 

 it from the position assigned to it by the verdict of the Con- 

 ference ; but they are suggestive of further inquiry as to the 

 direction of its affinities. 



It is evident, therefore, that to the conviction of men of 

 science, the labours of the Conference have not definitively 

 settled any one of the moot points which came before it. 

 But the mass of evidence which it collected and the conflict 

 of opinion which it elicited will doubtless assist materially 

 in conducting to a final judgment hereafter. The case 

 throughout maintained a perplexed and contradictory cha- 

 racter, not to be surpassed probably by any cause celebre on 

 record. 



The evidence was of two classes : 1st. The intrinsic, yielded 

 by the Flint haches and by the jaw, regarded per se through 

 their physical characters. 2nd. The extrinsic, or that con- 

 nected with the beds in which the objects were asserted to 

 have been found. 



In many important respects the first was directly at vari- 

 ance with the second, which appears to have weighed most 

 with the Conference in determining the conclusions at which 

 it arrived. On the present occasion it is proposed to give a 

 summary and analysis of the evidence as set forth in the 

 proces-verbaux, together with the results of some later inqui- 

 ries, where it was incomplete. 



The Flint haches and the human jaw, although in their 

 nature so widely different, were intimately connected in this 

 case, from the fact that they were both said to have been 



