191 
pial amount of inversion. The first three characters suggested to M. 
Quatrefages — if I may venture to cite him for a prehminary impression 
and not a judgment — the recollection of something corresponding in the 
ja\vs of Esquimaux, while the fifth character suggested to me the recollection 
of what I had seen in the jaw of an Australian savage. ^STeither of us had 
at hand the materials requisite for a satisfactory comparison, but the com- 
bination of characters above alluded to struck 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 Avith measurements of the principal 
specimen, and 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.E.S., and Mr. Somes, F.R.S., both practised anthropologists, gave me 
their assistance in my part of the inquiry. The former, like M. Quatre- 
fages and mj'self, 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, he produced a certain number 
which severally furnished all the peculiarities of the Abbeville specimen, 
marsupial 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 diff'erent from those that may be met with in the contents of a 
London churcliyard. The inference which I draw from these facts is that 
a very clever imposition has been practised by the terrassiers of the Abbe- 
ville gravel-pits, — so cunningly clever, that it could not have been surpassed 
by a committee of anthropologists 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 well established, but it inculcates a grave lesson of 
caution. " Sir, your obedient servant, 
" H. FALco^-ER, M.D., F.R.S. 
"21, Park Crescent, N.W., April 23rcf." 
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 are 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 ; and we would add that if 
