PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. 3 



trious academician, this creator also of a new science, was induced to 

 believe that he had traced the origin of the human race to a period 

 considerably more remote from the present time, than the limits 

 assigned to it by the scientific monuments which have been discovered 

 up to the present era. Were we to decide respecting the opinions of 

 my brother by the contents of some of the notes just spoken of, we 

 should say that he was very much disinclined indeed to admit, as 

 demonstrated, the proofs supplied by his learned colleague from his 

 discoveries. Very unfortunately he has left nothing from which we 

 can infer the nature of the reasons that led him to this expression of 

 doubt. 



Some persons have presumed that this opinion of my brother, 

 respecting the origin of man, was maintained by him in consequence 

 of the influence of a prejudice that was calculated to blind him with 

 respect to the facts which should have formed the true premises of his 

 inductions. Consequently, they contended against this judgment as 

 if it was not only an hypothesis, but a very false hypothesis, one that 

 was destined, at the utmost, to encourage doctrines which reason 

 could not possibly admit. Now, such charges as these were not 

 promulgated by learned men ; for it was not, by any means, in his- 

 torical monuments that a rational mind would attempt to discover 

 proofs of a greater antiquity of the world ; and, in point of fact, the 

 critical investigation of these monuments, contained in the Pre- 

 liminary Discourse to these Researches, leaves very little hope indeed 

 that any other conclusions can be fairly deduced from that examina- 

 tion, save those to which my brother has conducted us. The most 

 sanguine foes to the doctrine of the recent origin of our species, 

 belonged to that class of naturalists which entirely trusted to the 

 strata of our planet for proofs in favour of their opinion. 



Every authentic observation that has been accumulated up to the 

 present moment, has convincingly corroborated the obviously justi- 

 fiable conclusion which has been established by my brother, namely, 

 that the human species was subsequent to the last of the catastrophes 

 which had laid bare our present continents. It was of the first conse- 

 quence to those who were inclined to disbelieve that such was the case, 

 to find out, if possible, in the older strata of the earth, particularly in 

 those rocks containing the remains of animals, whose existence is re- 

 garded as having been long before that of man — to find out, we repeat, 

 the relics of human skeletons ; for, by such a discovery, they would 

 have immediately obtained the most direct and the most irrefragable 

 demonstration of the falsehood of the doctrine- against which they were 

 leagued in hostility. The investigations which were undertaken to 



