Page:Natural History Review (1862).djvu/262

Rh resembling both of the two principal types found at Abbeville and Amiens.

Finally, Mr. Evans himself, near Abbots Langley in Hertfordshire, has picked up on the surface of a field a weathered hatchet with the top broken off, but otherwise identical in form with the spear-head-shaped specimens from Amiens and Herne Bay.

But why, it mav be asked, should the history of this question be so recounted? why should it be treated differently from any other scientific discovery? The answer is not difficult. That the statement by Mr. Frere has been forgotten for half a century; that the weapon found by Mr. Conyers should have lain unnoticed for more than double that time; that the discoveries by M. Boucher de Perthes have been ignored for fifteen years; that the numerous cases in which caves have contained the remains of men together with those of extinct animals, have been explained away; are facts which show how deeply rooted was the conviction that man belonged altogether to a more recent order of things, and, whatever other accusation may be brought against them, geologists can at least not be said to have hastily accepted the theory of the coexistence of the human race with the now extinct Pachydermata of Northern Europe.

Though, however, the distinguished geologists to whom I have referred, have all, with one exception, expressed themselves more or less strongly as to the great antiquity ot these curious weapons, still, I do not wish that they should be received as judges; I only claim the right to summon them as witnesses.

The questions to be decided may be stated as follows:—

1st. Are the so-called flint implements of human workmanship, or the results of physical agencies?

2ndly. Are the flint implements of the same age as the bones of the extinct animals with which they occur?

3rdly. Are we entitled to impute a high antiquity to the beds in which these remains occur?

4thly. What are the conditions under which they were deposited?

To the first three of these questions an affirmative answer would be given, almost unanimously, by those geologists who have given any special attention to the subject. Fortunately, however, there is one exception to this rule; Blackwood's Magazine for October, 1860, contains an article in which the last two questions are maintained to be still unanswered, and in which therefore a verdict of "Not Proven" is demanded. Not indeed that there is any difference of opinion as to the weapons themselves. "For more than twenty years," says Prof. Ramsay, "I have daily handled stones, whether fashioned by nature or art, and the flint hatchets of Amiens and Abbeville seem to me as clearly works of art as any Sheffield whittle." It will be better however to quote from the candid sceptic in Blackwood. "They bear," he admits (p. 438), "unmistakeably the indications of having