C24 



HUMAN JAW AND FLINT-IMPLEMENTS 



pages that it presented every physical character of preserva- 

 tion of bones buried within the historical period, and that it 

 wanted all those which are commonly seen in fossil bones. 

 Is it conceivable that this bone could have lain embedded in 

 a mineral layer of manganese and iron, permeable to water, 

 for fifteen or eighteen centuries, and that it should have con- 

 tinued but little altered and so absolutely free from impreg- 

 nation with these metals that the covering layer of black 

 matrix could be washed off with as much facility as if it had 

 been smeared on during the present year, and that not a 

 single dendrite should have been visible on the washed sur- 

 face ? I have studied fossil bones during upwards of thirty 

 years under various conditions, within the tropics, in the 

 Pliocene and Quaternary beds of Europe, and in the caves ; 

 such a case has never come within my knowledge or under 

 my observation. The mute and emphatic eloquence of the 

 persistent intrinsic evidence of the Moulin-Quignon jaw and 

 flints impresses me with a force that far countervails the 

 results of the fallible observation made upon the beds. In 

 this view it seems to me that the real issue, as regards the 

 jaw and the haches, is not the geological age of the beds, but 

 when and by what means, within a comparatively recent 

 period, these objects got introduced where they were found ? 

 That many of the haches are modern fabrications is as cer- 

 tain as a question of the kind can be, without the testimony 

 of eye-witnesses to the act of making them. Several which. 

 I now possess from the ' black seam ' of Moulin-Quignon 

 and Mautort are of this character. That the suspicions 

 which were expressed in England about the bone were war- 

 rantable is sufficiently proved by the fact, that M. Boucher 

 de Perthes, with characteristic candour, has put on record 

 the fact that some workmen of Abbeville, before 1857, had 

 attempted, and for some short time with success, to pass off 

 the skull of a recent horse as a fossil specimen from Menche- 

 court. They had first embedded it in a paste of chalk and 

 water, and then covered it with the sand of Menchecourt. 1 

 Although the workmen were absolved, by the decision of the 

 Conference in the present instance, the fact ought to be borne 

 in mind, in weighing the different aspects of this inscrutable 

 case. The trick which was committed once might be repeated 

 again, and those who pass off fictitious haches as genuine, 

 would not be scrupulous about a bone. 2 



1 'Antiquites Celtiques, &c.,' torn. ii. 

 p. 456. 



2 The ' Quarterly Journal of the Geo- 

 logical Society,' for November, 1863, 

 contained an essay by Mr. Prestwieh, 

 entitled : ' On the Section at Moulin- 



Quignon and Abbeville, and on the pe- 

 culiar character of some of the Flint- 

 implements recently discovered there,' 

 which concludes with the following para- 

 graph : — 



Note. — Further and more deliberate 



