THE GEOLOGIST. 



AUGUST 1862. 



M. GEAS' ATTACK ON THE EVIDENCE OE THE ELINT- 

 IMPLEMENTS IN EESPECT TO THE ANTIQUITY 

 OE MAN. 



It is extraordinary liow many people have an obliquity in their 

 mental vision. Some mentally never see straight at all, but look at 

 everything askew. These are harmless people ; you know them at 

 once, and pity their defects, just as you do a person with a downright 

 squint. But those who have a slight cast in the eye are the most 

 dangerous ; you are not aware they occasionally squint ; you do not 

 perceive, perhaps after even a close scrutiny, that there is anything 

 amiss with their vision at all. So it is with the mental cast ; you do 

 not observe it, as a general rule, for it is only now and then it shows 

 itself. 



TVhen the Antiquity of Man was first proclaimed from the dis- 

 covery of the Abbeville fiints by Boucher de Perthes, no one believed 

 it. Everybody thought him like the mad man who swore all the 

 world was mad ; and so it seemed, then, as if all the world had 

 mental obliquity of vision, which made them declare our savant of 

 Abbeville to be labouring under a delusion. When, however, Eigollet, 

 Prestwich, Elower, Lyell, Evans, and others of the goodly company 

 of geologists, — as unbelieving, however, as so many St. Thomases, — 

 went, saw, and returned believing, the fame of Boucher de Perthes' 

 discoveries gained ground. Some there were who hardened them- 

 selves in their unbelief, and hazarded wild theories of ocean-waves 

 chipping out artificial forms, and of recent objects sinking down in 



TOL. V. 2 O 



