148 traces of a religious belief of primeval max. 



Lecturer's Eeply. 



In reply to Mr. W. Woods Smyth, who revives the exploded 

 theories of Herbert Spencer on the origin of religion, it is impossible 

 to hold these in the light of modern research. They are pure 

 guesses and nothing more. Mr. Smyth says that sacrifice was 

 unknown to primeval man, but I have proved the contrary from the 

 picture at La Madeleine, and he has not attempted to controvert 

 my arguments. Every geologist believes in the existence of the 

 great mammals of the Pleistocene Period in Europe, because there is 

 conclusive evidence to prove it ; but I do not believe in the 

 existence of great land serpents in Europe at that time, since none 

 of their remains have been discovered. As to the Xeanderthal 

 skull, it is now known that the earliest measurements of it were too 

 small, but even so they gave it a cranial capacity greater than the 

 skulls of the ancient cultivated Peruvians. Its antiquity is also 

 very doubtful. Rodolph Wagner maintained that it was the skull 

 of a modern Dutchman, and Yon Mayer that it was the skull of a 

 Cossack, killed in the war of 1814. Similar remarks apply to the 

 Spy skulls, which are even larger than the Xeanderthal skull. 



In reply to Mr. Howard, the bones of men and of animals found 

 in the caves to which I have referred must be of the same antiquity, 

 because they lie side by side, are in the same mineral condition, and 

 are overlaid by genuine Paleolithic deposits. Thus the human 

 relics in the cave of Frontal were overlaid by a Paleolithic deposit 

 of clay evidently formed after the human bones and relics were 

 placed in the cavern. 



Mr. Woods Smyth further states that the facts I adduce do not 

 constitute evidence. I reply that he has made no attempt to 

 refute them, and that taken together their cumulative effect is 

 unanswerable. On another point, Nature, by introducing a deposit 

 of clay or gravel, or by covering the relics by a thick bed of 

 stalagmite, can close a cave, as effectually as Man could do it. 

 While the ivory, of which some of the relics to which I have 

 referred are made, is shown to be of paleolithic age, since it is cut 

 into the form, or bears the images carved upon it, of animals which 

 only lived in that period, and it is cut in a manner which was only 

 practised then. 



