346 PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



corded from the Miocene of Aurillac (Auvergne) by M. Tardy, 

 and a cut rib of the Miocene species, Halitlicrium fossile, has 

 been found by M. Delaunay at Pouance (Maine et Loire). But 

 there is still much difference of opinion as to the probability of 

 man having existed in Miocene times. At the Congress of archae- 

 ologists and anthropologists, held in Brussels (1372), opinion 

 seemed to be equally divided for and against the human origin 

 of the Miocene "flints" which M. TAbbe Bourgeois submitted 

 for examination. On the one side were MM. Worsaae, d'Omalius, 

 Capellini. Mortillet, and other experts, who agreed with the Abbe ; 

 on the other side were MM. Steenstrup, Yirchow, Fraas, and 

 Desor, who opposed his views ; while some again, like M. 

 Quatrefages, reserved their judgment, and were content to wait 

 for additional evidence. " Since then,"' says M. Quatrefages, 

 "fresh specimens discovered by M. l'Abbe Bourgeois have 

 removed my last doubts. A small knife or scraper, among others, 

 which shows a fine regular finish, can, in my opinion, only have 

 been shaped by man. Nevertheless, I do not blame those of my 

 colleagues who deny, or still doubt. In such a matter there is 

 no very great urgency, and, doubtless, the existence of Miocene 

 man will be proved, as that of Glacial and Pliocene man has 

 been, by facts.'" x Some palaeontologists, in rejecting the evidence 

 produced by the Abbe, appear to have been influenced by the 

 consideration that all the mammalia of Miocene times have 

 disappeared from the living world, and that, therefore, it is very 

 unlikely that man, related to them so closely in organisation, 

 could have survived the action of those causes which resulted 

 in the extinction of all the terrestrial mammals with which he is 

 inferred to have co-existed. To which Quatrefages has pertinently 

 replied that although he recognises the force of such objections, 

 he yet must take into account human intelligence, which some 

 palaeontologists seem to forget. It is evidently owing to this 

 intelligence, he remarks, that the man of the Pliocene Age was 

 able to survive two great geological periods. "He protected 

 himself against cold by fire, and so survived till the return of a 



1 The Human Species, 2d edit., p. 151. 



