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THE BRITISH NATURALIST. 



"April 



man with the mammalia of the Miocene age — the second division of 

 the Tertiary formation, — an age with which, in order to support the 

 theories of some enthusiastic anthropologists, traces of man are first 

 supposed to be identified. This proof of Garigou's was the discovery 

 of some fragmentary bones belonging principally to the Dicrocerus 

 elegans, which were split up similarly to those bones found in the 

 quaternary caverns of the hill of Sausan, in Gers. Four } T ears after- 

 wards — that was in 186S — when these bones were submitted for 

 examination, the idea of their being in any way evidence in support of 

 a co-existence of man with the Miocene mammalia was negatived, as 

 also were the markings or scratchings pointed out by Colonel 

 Laussedat on the jawbone of a rhinoceros, which had been exhumed 

 from the Miocene beds of Billy. Delaunay, however, produced the 

 ribs of a Haliterium, which he had obtained from the shell marls of 

 Pouance, in the Maine-et-Loire, on which certain markings could be 

 distinguished, bv o-eologfists considered as valuable evidence, and which 

 for a long time had the credit of being the handiwork of man. During 

 the year i S 73 , the Abbe Bourgeois, who had previously endorsed this 

 opinion, now came to the conclusion that the markings in question had 

 not been made by man ; and Hebert, who had undertaken a painstaking 

 examination of the remains and the markings on them, announced as 

 his opinion that they had been produced when the bones were in 

 a fresh state by the Carchorodon megalodon. All these "finds" are 

 preserved in the Museum at St. Germaine, and on first view the various 

 features connected with them are apparently produced by the human 

 hand. In addition to these remains, the only objects belonging to the 

 Miocene period bearing any weight on the question are the worked 

 flints of Thenay. in the Loir-et-Cher. These were found deep down 

 below a recent bed containing polished flints, which rested on a 

 quaternary layer embedding flints of the St. Acheul type, and also 

 topped several tertiary strata containing numerous remains of the 

 great mammalia, the Haliterium, Mastodon, Acerotherium. 



The flints consisted of small scrapers, piercers, small arrow-heads, 

 &c, all of which were so rudelv shaped that for a long time they were 

 regarded as objects which had acquired their shape by chance, and 

 without the intervention of any intellectual power. For four long 

 years the question of the shaping of the flints being produced by an 

 intellectual being, was one which excited no small amount of curiosity 

 and interest in various scientific circles, when in 1S73 Bourgeois pro- 

 duced a further number of flints for inspection, whereof the scrapers 

 called for marked attention, since several of them not only showed 

 traces of the action of fire, but they of themselves were sufficient 

 evidence that fire had been requisitioned for the purpose of giving 

 them their form. 



