Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/32

22 direction of studies or in some of the branches of the biological sciences. I purpose to supply only a few examples of them. I recollect that in 1855, when I was a professor at Lille, Mr. Huxley wrote to me that "we in England are all stirred up and much perplexed by the discoveries of M. Boucher de Perthes." The reference is, of course, to the interest that was aroused about the cut flints of Saint-Acheul and the famous jaw-bone of Moulin-Quignon. English men of science and geologists came to Amiens, lively discussions took place, a committee of Frenchmen and foreigners was formed and proceeded to the spot to make official investigations. Some fraud and incredulity were mingled in the affair. A workman confessed to me, for a money consideration and a promise of silence, that he had himself fabricated one of the two specimens which I procured, and that it had not lain long enough in the bed to acquire the patina of the other. The point I desire to emphasize is, that the real thing that was discovered then, especially after the visit of the British investigators, was the books, the researches, and the new ideas of M. Boucher de Perthes, which had till then passed unnoticed. The beginning of the prehistoric studies, which have since attained so considerable development, may be dated from this time. Since the discoveries of Boucher de Perthes at Saint-Acheul, and those of Lartet and Christy in Périgord, a part of the history of man has been completely transformed; and geology, so far as concerns the most modern formations, has been subjected to the salutary influence of the new knowledge. What has become of the superannuated ideas that conceived fossil man impossible? What new problems, full of interest, have been presented since the remains were found in Périgord and other places of animals that no longer live where their bones are lying! How many interesting questions have resulted from the simple discovery of a reindeer-horn in a grotto of Eyzies; and what a long road we have gone over since then! Is it strange that the number of explorers has become great, and that liberal and often magnificent encouragement is given them? It would be ungrateful in this connection not to repeat the acknowledgment of our obligations to one of our members—M. Girard, of Lyon—who has bequeathed to our Association one hundred and seventy-two thousand francs to be applied exclusively to researches in prehistoric anthropology; the proceeds of which your committee is able to use this year for the first time.

The lively emotion produced by the discoveries of M. Boucher de Perthes had begun to subside, and researches were going on everywhere, when Darwin's first studies appeared in 1858 and 1859. These dates must always be memorable in the history of natural science, for they mark an epoch from which zoölogical studies entered upon a new course. The learned world, we might say,