282 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



thfi ground, and burying themselves, and other equally untenable 

 notions, but these waxed fewer and fewer, not by dying out, but by 

 becoming converts to the novel truths. Others there were who 

 enthusiastically grasped at everything that came in their way, and 

 attempted to send back half the antiquities of the historic period to 

 the Gravel age. These still exist, and if their labours be a little rash, 

 they are not altogether useless. If they make a great many mistakes, 

 they now and then drop on a new fact, and that covers a multitude 

 of failures. Others there are, and these are the best of all, saving 

 the real workers for science, who lose no chance of collecting any- 

 thing they think may afford useful knowledge. The people, so com- 

 mon at one time, with the dreadful mental squint about the flint 

 imiplements of the gravel age are now, as we have said, few and far 

 between, but there are still some possessed of the dangerous slight 

 cast of mental obliquity, if we mistake not — that is, if the obliquity 

 does not lie with ourselves. Of course we do not think it can, 

 nobody ever does. Our worthy contemporary the ' Parthenon,' who 

 says, or rather prints a great many good things, has lately printed a 

 translation, from the Erench ' Comptes-Eendus,' of a paper by M. Sci- 

 pion Gras, who brings up a question we really had thought completely 

 settled. We knew our best men had gone to see ; we knew they had 

 come back testifying to the facts. But now M. Gras comes forward 

 with an article " On the Insufficiency of the Arguments drawn from 

 the Position of the Worked Flints of St. Acheul to show the Exist- 

 ence of Man during the Quaternary Period." There is mental obli- 

 quity somewhere, that is certain ; we fear it rests with M. Gras, for 

 he says he went to St. Acheul, " desirous of enlightening Ms doubts " 

 as to the conclusions drawn from the position of the flint axes there. 

 Of course we saw the notice of M. Gras' paper in the ' Comptes- 

 Rendus,' where it appeared a short time before our contemporary 

 printed the translation ; we think also we saw it noticed in ' Cosmos,' 

 but we thought it best to let it alone. We saw no good in stirring 

 up uselessly a vexed question, by a reference to a paper, the argu- 

 ments in which were either founded on erroneous bases or altogether 

 futile. As, however, our respected contemporary has brought the 

 paper before English readers, who otherwise perhaps would never 

 have heard at all of it, we cannot let M. Gras' opinions pass without 

 comment. M. Gras shall, however, have fair play at our hand^. AYe 

 will give the translation intact before our comments. He begins : — 



" There are found at St. Acheul and in its neighbourhood (leaving out 

 of question the more elevated plateaux) two diluvial deposits which appear 



