THE ANTIQUITY OE MAN. 
457 
not belong to tlie Quaternary or Diluvian age at all, but to 
the terrains meubles of tbe actual or modern period, in which 
he would not be in the least surprised if human bones were 
found. For himself, however, he added that he did not believe 
in man’s contemporaneity with the extinct elephants, rhino- 
ceroses, and other mammalia of the Quaternary period. Neither 
also did Sir Charles Lyell at one time ; but he and others have 
gradually become advocates of great human antiquity. 
On the whole, the difficulties of disbelief appear to us to be 
greater than those of belief ; and even if the amount of antiquity' 
be reduced, so that from one geological epoch we are compelled 
to retreat into another and less remote, nevertheless even with 
the strictest circumscription and the sternest concision, we 
can scarcely be brought back to a duration of man at all 
corresponding’ with the popular chronology. Suppose, for 
example, that the age of the Picardy gravels overlying the 
shaped flints should be subsequently estimated at far less than 
their now presumed age, even then twenty thousand years or 
more would be, as geologists reckon, but an inadequate period 
for the accumulation of from sixteen to twenty feet of material 
in the common course of geological deposition. 
If, however, we once transcend so greatly the popular chro- 
nology as to attribute to man an antiquity of even twenty or 
thirty thousand years, the Rubicon is passed, and may we not as 
well march boldly on from the other side, without remembering 
what the passage of the river cost us, or how long we hesitated 
upon its bank before we ventured to bathe our feet in the 
chilling waters ? 
Note. — At a meeting of the Geological Society on June 3rd, an interesting 
and animated discussion followed the reading of a paper drawn up by Mr. 
Prestwich on the Gravels of the Somme, in Picardy. Dr. Falconer explained 
the difficulty he had felt respecting the alleged human jaw from Moulin- 
Quignon, and rather recanted his published assent to the “authenticity 
of its finding.” He was succeeded by Mr. Evans, who detailed the suspicious 
circumstances of the flint implements said to be found near it, and confirmed 
the doubts of Dr. Falconer both as to the flints and the jaw. Mr. Busk 
spoke respecting the jaw, and his minute examination of it. On the whole, 
there appeared much reason to conclude that the jaw was far more modern 
than the gravel, and that it may have been the jaw of a man of the historic 
period, perhaps of the Romano-Gallic times. The almost inevitable inference 
from the evidence stated by the above-named three gentlemen was, that the 
jaw was not a remnant of a primeval man, but of a man who lived in historic 
times. 
