EOTtETCN INTELLIGENCE. 



101 



pial amount of inversion. The first three characters suggested to M. 

 Quatrefagcs — if I may venture to cite him for a preliminary impression 

 and not a judgment — the recollection of something corresponding in the 

 jaws of Esquimaux, while the fifth character suggested to me the recollection 

 of what I had seen in the jaw of an Australian savage. Neither of us had 

 at hand the materials requisite for a satisfactory comparison, but the com- 

 bination of characters above alluded to struct us both as sufficiently re- 

 markable to demand serious examination. M. Quatrefages departed for 

 Paris, taking the jaw with him, while I returned to London, bringing 

 drawings and a careful description with measurements of the principal 

 specimen, and M. de Perthes confided to me the detached molar. I may 

 add that the jaw specimen, although professing to have been yielded from 

 below a heavy load of coarse flints, presented no appearance of having 

 been crushed or rolled; and that, making allowance for the crust of ma- 

 trix enveloping it, the bone was light, and not infiltrated with metallic 

 matter. The condyle washed yielded a dirty white colour. 



" As to the result, I have as yet no authentic information of the final 

 conclusions which have been arrived at in Paris. My friends, Mr. Busk, 

 F.P.S., and Mr. Somes, F.H.S., both practised anthropologists, gave me 

 their assistance in my part of the inquiry. The former, like M. Quatre- 

 fages and myself, was struck with the odd conjunction of unusual charac- 

 ters presented by the jaw, and speedily produced a lower jaw of the 

 Australian type, brought by Professor Huxley from Darnley Island, which 

 yielded the same kind of marsupial inversion, so to speak, with a nearly 

 corresponding form in the reclinate posterior margin, ascending ramus, 

 and sigmoid notch. But Mr. Somes's abundant collection brought the 

 matter speedily to a point. From the pick of a sackful of human lower 

 jaws, yielded by an old London churchyard, lie produced a certain number 

 which severally furnished all the peculiarities of the Abbeville specimen, 

 ma/r8V/pial inversion inclusive, although not one of them showed them all 

 in conjunction. We then proceeded to saw up the detached molar found 

 at Moulin-Quignon. It proved to be quite recent ; the section was white, 

 glistening, full of gelatine, and fresh- looking. There was an end to the 

 case. First, the flint-hatchets were pronounced by highly competent ex- 

 perts (Evans and Prestwich) to be spurious ; secondly, the reputed fossil 

 molar was proved to be recent ; thirdly, the reputed fossil jaw showed no 

 character different from those that may be met with in the contents of a 

 London churchyard. The inference which I draw from these facts is that 

 a very clever imposition has been practised by the tcr.rassiers of the Abbe- 

 ville gravel-pits,— so cunningly clever, that it could not have been surpassed 

 by a committee of authropologists enacting a practical joke. The selec- 

 tion of the specimen was probably accidental ; but it is not a little singular 

 that a jaw combining so many peculiarities should have been hit upon by 

 uninstructed workmen. 



" The break-down in this spurious case in no wise affects the value of 

 the real evidence, now r well established, but it inculcates a grave lesson of 

 caution. " Sir, your obedient servant, 



" II. Falconer, M.D., F.R.S. 



" 21, Park Crescent, N. W., April 23rd." 



The so-called fossil jaw from Moulin-Quignon has been taken to Paris 

 by M. de Quatrefages, for the purpose of being submitted to the French 

 Institute. 



For our own part, we arc indebted to M. de Perthes for his ready com- 

 munication to ourselves of the intelligence of this find, and of the parti- 

 culars of the deposit and the osseous remains ; ami we would add that if 



