ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 



281 



silently ignored ; and, more than this, the detailed 

 statements of three distinct and careful observers con- 

 firming each other, were rejected by a great scientific 

 Society as too improbable for publication, only because 

 they proved (if they were true) the coexistence of man 

 with extinct animals. 



But this state of belief in opposition to facts, could 

 not long continue. In 1859 a few of our most eminent 

 geologists examined for themselves into the alleged 

 occurrence of flint implements in the gravels of the 

 north of France, which had been made public fourteen 

 years before, and found them strictly correct. The 

 caverns of Devonshire were about the same time care- 

 fully examined by equally eminent observers, and were 

 found fully to bear out the statements of those who 

 had published their results eighteen years before. Flint 

 implements began to be found in all suitable localities 

 in the south of England, when carefully searched for, 

 often in gravels of equal antiquity with those of France. 

 Caverns giving evidence of human occupation at various 

 remote periods were explored, in Belgium and the south 

 of France — lake-dwellings were examined in Switzerland 

 — refuse-heaps in Denmark — and thus a whole series of 

 remains have been discovered carrying back the history 

 of mankind from the earliest historic periods to a long 

 distant past. 



The antiquity of the races thus discovered cannot be 

 measured in years ; but it may be approximately deter- 



^ In 1854 (?) a communication from the Torquay Natural-History Society 

 confirming previous accounts by Mr. Godwin- Austen, Mr. Vivian, and the 

 Rev. Mr. M'Enery, that worked flints occurred in Kent's Hole with remains 

 of extinct species, was rejected as too improbable for publication. 



