Page:Antiquity of Man as Deduced from the Discovery of a Human Skeleton.djvu/29

Rh sandy soil, eight strata and thirty feet lower down, was trod by the man whose osteological characters are given above.

It may be that since the sand, no. 9, lies upon the "ballast," no. 10, it indicates a geological date more recent than that of the gravel-beds at St. Acheul and Moulin-Quignon, which revealed to Boucher de Perthes in 1863 the tools of a Palæolithic French race, of which the osteal characters are yet unknown. Those gravels are alluded to by the experienced anthropologist De Quatrefages as "alluvial"; and by Prestwich as nearer our time than the Pliocene tertiaries.

In the careful summary of all the evidences bearing on the subject of the 'Work,' for a copy of which I am indebted to the distinguished author, he remarks, on the Fuhlrott discovery of a human skull-cap in the grotto of Neanderthal, that "Les conditions dans lesquelles il a été trouvé ne paraissent pas permettré d’en préciser l'âge géologique avec certitude" (p. 30).

Of any anatomical claim to antiquity, or inferiority, which this portion of skull supports, I concur with the experienced craniologist Barnard Davis in the conclusions he has recorded in his 'Essay' on this special subject. Amongst the skulls of modern educated gentlemen showing the alleged low and, so-called, "simial form" of cranium, is that of the prelate Mansuy, "Evêque de