FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE. 



219 



de Perthes having disengaged a part from its envelope, made them seek for 

 the other half, and gave them five francs, promising them double if they 

 found the other halt or any other portion of the skeleton. This offer ho 

 has renewed many times, and even offered treble the first. However, 

 although they have made; many researches, they have not since the 28th of 

 ]V1 arch brought to M. Boucher de Perthes a single fragment of human bone. 

 Now, doubtless, if they had buried the first, they would have largely sup- 

 plied aiterwards, not only M. Boucher de Perthes, but all the amateurs who 

 have asked for specimens." 



With regard to this last proposition, we do not however see the force, 

 because if the workmen had been encouraged by rewards — as indeed they 

 had been by M. Boucher de Perthes — to find human remains, a solitary 

 skull was much more easily obtainable by them than a whole skeleton, and 

 a bit of jaw much more so even than a skull ; and, therefore, it might be 

 on the other hand said that the not finding of further remains was confir- 

 matory of a ruse having been practised. The force of the discovery does 

 not however rest on this point. The question is not a question of sus- 

 picion against the workmen but of positive evidence from the witnesses 

 who saw M. de Perthes extract the jaw from its bed. These witnesses 

 must be trustworthy or not ; either they did see the jaw in its matrix 

 before extracted, or they did not; either they did see M. de Perthes take 

 it out from thence, or they did not. What do these witnesses say ? What 

 does the world say of them ? Were they not capable, intelligent, honour- 

 able men, — not illiterate bumpkins whose eyes and tongues we might 

 hesitate to believe ? 



For M. Boucher de Perthes himself nothing can be more open, more 

 straightforward, than his conduct; and the same, we think, — whatever be the 

 stale of the jaw or the conclusions we may come to from its study, — must 

 be said of the workmen. They knew that every fragment of bone, even 

 of animals, was deemed of value by their patron, and as soon as they saw 

 an inch of bone appearing in their diggings they go and tell him ; they do 

 not call it human, they make no fuss about it. M. de Perthes goes to see it. 

 lie goes to see every bit of bone they tell him of; he may have gone 

 similarly scores of times before, but this time he perceives, as any educated 

 man would do, that he has got a bit of a human jaw ; the workmen, 

 expert ing some great bone of mammoth or other ancient wild beast, are 

 astonished at its smallness, still more so to learn what it is. M. Boucher 

 de Perthes orders it not to be disturbed, not to be touched ; he fetches the 

 most competent of his friends, members of the local but well-known 

 Societe d'Emulation, men at least capable of using their eyes and of 

 giving truthful and accurate testimony; and in their presence he clears 

 away the soil and takes out the jaw, leaving the still adherent earth upon it. 

 Certainly, if such a discovery is to be ignored en suspicion, it will be hard 

 to accept any fact at all in quaternary geology, and not half the facts in 

 geological science which are based on far less conclusive testimony. If 

 we object to the testimony in this case, we could only get better by finding 

 the jaw over again. 



The ' Moniteur ' al>o comments on the late scientific tourney. 1 1 sa) - : 

 "The human jaw which has been recently found near Abbeville, in the 

 diluvium, — a geological bed in which hitherto no similar vestige has been 

 discovered, — has been photographed by M. P. Potteau, preparator ai the 

 Museum of Natural History, to w hom w o owe already an interesting col- 

 lection of types of different human races. We have before us two proofs 

 representing the two faces of this curious relic of a generation whose ex- 

 istence dales, in all probability, beyond the historic peiiod. li is the half 



