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ous than that which exists at present. Here again, then, the earliest 
footprints of our race are traced up to a point, preceding indeed 
some important physical changes, but clearly subsequent to the estab- 
lishment of all the main conditions which now affect the distribution 
of animal and vegetable life. 
As regards the extinction of some animals, I have spoken as if 
the contemporaneousness of man with them whilst yet living ought 
not to be absolutely assumed merely from the fact that his imple- 
ments are associated with their bones. But on this point new evi- 
dence is being rapidly collected and brought together. Mons. 
Lartet, a distinguished French naturalist, has found what he consi- 
ders to be distinct evidence of the mark of human weapons on various 
parts of the skeletons of the extinct mammalia of the drift. These 
marks have been detected on the skull of the Megaceros Hibernicus , 
or great Irish elk, — an animal which stood some ten feet high — on 
the bones of the Rhinoceros tichorinus , and on those of various species 
of the ox and deer, which are now either extinct or confined to the 
last remnants of a declining race. The marks are of various kinds — 
some of them peculiar — indicating a sort of sawing with some instru- 
ment not of the smoothest edge. M. Lartet has ascertained that 
these blows and cuttings could not be made except on fresh bones — 
that is to say, on bones undried and retaining their animal cartilage. 
Farther, he has succeeded in producing on the bones of existing 
animals precisely the same peculiar forms of incision by using one 
of the old flint implements found in the same beds of gravel, whilst 
he has equally found that similar marks are incapable of being pro- 
duced by implements of metallic edge. His conclusion is thus stated 
by himself : — “ If, therefore, the presence of worked flints in the 
diluvial banks of the Somme, long since brought to light by M. 
Boucher de Perthes, and more recently confirmed by the rigorous 
verifications of several of your learned fellow-countrymen, have 
established the certainty of the existence of man at the time when 
those erratic deposits were formed, the traces of an intentional ope- 
ration on the bones of the rhinoceros, the aurochs, the megaceros, 
the cervus sommensis, &c. &c., supply equally the inductive demon- 
stration of the contemporaneousness of those species with the human 
race.” 
The great number of flint implements which have been found in 
the French beds — said to amount to upwards of a thousand in a few 
