THE ANTIQUITY OF ' MAN. 129 



iinacity these transmutation hypotheses, as did the old alchemists 

 their attempts to transmute chemical species into each other. 

 Perhaps the comparison is hardly fair to the older school of spe- 

 culators, for chemical species or elements tend by their combina- 

 tion to form new substances, which animal and vegetable species 

 do not ; and by so much the balance of antecedent probability 

 was on the side of the alchemists, as compared with the transmuta- 

 tionists, though their methods and doctrines were very similar. 

 "We may, however, at least hope that, like the researches of the 

 alchemists, those of their successors may develop new and impor- 

 tant truths. Leaving then this much vexed topic, let us proceed 

 to our second inquiry, as to the actual antiquity of these primi- 

 tive men. 



This antiquity is of course to be measured by the geological 

 scale of time, whose periods are marked not by years or centuries, 

 but by the extinction of successive faunas and floras, and the pro- 

 gress of physical changes. With respect to the first of these marks 

 of time, we confess that we have not regarded the observations of 

 Boucher de Perthes and others, as free from the suspicion that ac- 

 cidental mixtures of human and fossil bones, or other causes not 

 taken into the account, may have vitiated their conclusions ; and 

 this suspicion still applies to some of the cases cited by Sir C. 

 Lyell, as more or less certain proofs. After reading the state- 

 ments of the present volume, we think the Belgian and Brixham 

 caves may be taken as good evidence of the probable contempo- 

 raneousness of man with the Elephas primigenius, Rhinoceros ti- 

 chorhinus, Ursus spelwus, and their contemporaries ; or rather 

 as evidence that man was beginning to appear in Western Europe 

 before those animals had finally disappeared. In consequence 

 of some flaws in the evidence, as it appears to a reader at a dis- 

 tance, we cannot as yet so implicitly receive the evidence of the 

 Somme flint weapons. The cave of Aurignac described by M. 

 Lartet, and in which seventeen human skeletons were found 

 buried, apparently in a sitting posture, cannot be relied on, owing 

 to the late period at which it was explored. We are sorry to 

 doubt this unique instance of antediluvian sepulchral rites, but 

 all the appearances actually seen* by M. Lartet are better expli- 

 cable on the supposition that a cave, once tenanted by the cave 



* We refer to Mr. Lartet's account of his discovery in the Natural 

 History Review, as well as the more concise statement given in the book 

 before us. 



Can. Nat. 9 Voi, VIII. 



