Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/308

294 And it must be confessed that not a little force was added to the opposition by certain characteristics of Boucher de Perthes himself; gifted, foresighted, and vigorous as he was, he was his own worst enemy; carried away by his own discoveries, he jumped to the most astounding conclusions: the engravings in the later volume of his great work, showing what he thought to be human features and inscriptions upon some of the flint implements, are worthy of a comic almanac; and at the great National Museum of Archæology at St. Germain, beneath the shelves bearing the remains which he discovered, which mark the triumph of a great new movement in human science, are drawers containing specimens hardly worthy of a penny museum, from which he drew the most unwarranted inferences as to the language, religion, and usages of prehistoric man.

But Boucher triumphed none the less. Among his bitter opponents at first was Dr. Rigollot, who in 1855, searching earnestly for materials to refute the innovator, dug into the deposits of St. Acheul—and was converted: for he found implements similar to those of Abbeville, making still more certain the existence of man during the Drift period. So, too, Gaudry a year later made similar discoveries.

But most important was the evidence of the truth which now came from other parts of France and from many other countries. The French leaders in geological science had been held back, not only by awe of Cuvier, but by recollections of Scheuchzer. Ridicule has always been a serious weapon in France, and the ridicule which finally overtook the adherents of the attempt of Scheuchzer, Mazurier, and others, to square geology with Genesis, was still remembered. From the great body of French scientists, therefore, Boucher secured at first no aid. His support came from the other side of the Channel. The most eminent English geologists, such as Falconer, Prestwich, and Lyell, visited the beds at Abbeville and St. Acheul, convinced themselves that the discoveries of Boucher, Rigollot, and their colleagues were real, and then quietly but firmly told England the truth.

And now there appeared a most effective ally in France. The arguments used against Boucher de Perthes and some of the other early investigators of bone caves had been that the implements found might have been washed about and turned over by great floods, and therefore that they might be of a recent period; but in 1861 Edward Lartet published an account of his own excavations at the Grotto of Aurignac, and the proof that man had existed in the time of the Quaternary animals was complete. This grotto had been carefully sealed in prehistoric times by a stone at its entrance; no interference from disturbing currents of water had been possible; and Lartet found, in place, bones of eight out