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 half or any other portion of the skeleton. This offer he 
has renewed many times, and even offered treble the first. However, 
although they have made many researelics, they have not since the 28Lh of 
March brought to M. Boucher de Perthes a single fragment of human bone. 
Now, doubtless, if they had buried the first, they M ould liave largely sup- 
plied alterwards, not only M. Boucher de Perthes, but all the amateurs who 
have asked for specimens." 
With regard to tliis last proposition, we do not however see the force, 
because if the workmen had been encouraged by rewards — as indeed tliey 
had been by M. Boucher de Perthes — to find human remains, a solitary 
skull was much more easily obtainable by tliem 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 rme 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 tliey did not. Wliat do these witnesses say ? What 
does the world say of them P Were they not ca])able, intelligent, honour- 
able men, — not illiterate bumpkins whose eyes and tongues we might 
hesitate to believe ? 
For M. Boucher de Pertlies himself nothing can be more open, more 
8traightforw-ard,than his conduct; and the same, we think, — whatever be the 
state 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, tboy make no fuss about it. M. de Perthes goes to see it. 
He 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, 
expecting some great bone of mammoth or other ancient wild beast, are 
astonished at its smallness, still more so to learn what it is. M. BoucIkt 
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 truthfid and accurate testimony ; and in their presence he cl?ars 
away the soil and takes out the jaw, leaving the still adherent earth upon it. 
Certainly, if such a discovery is to be ignored on 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 ' also comments on the late scientific tourney. It says : 
"The human jaw which has been recently found near Abbeville, in the 
diluvium, — a geological bed in w hich hitherto no similar vestige has been 
discovered, — has been photographed by M. P. Potteau, preparator at the 
Museum of Natural History, to whom we 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 dates, in all probability, beyond the historic period. It is the half 
