Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 37.djvu/312

298 naturally answered that few if any other bones as small as those of man had been found, and that this fact was an additional proof of the great length of the period since man had lived with the extinct animals; for, since specimens of human workmanship proved man's existence as fully as remains of his bones could do, the absence or even rarity of human and other small bones simply indicated the long periods of time required for dissolving them away.

Yet Boucher, inspired by the genius he had already shown, and filled with the spirit of prophecy, declared that human bones would yet be found in the midst of the flint implements, and in 1863 he claimed that this prophecy had been fulfilled by the discovery at Moulin Quignon of a portion of a human jaw deep in the early Quaternary deposits. But his triumph was short-lived; the opposition ridiculed his discovery; they showed that he had offered a premium to his workmen for the discovery of human remains, and they naturally drew the inference that some tricky laborer had deceived him. The result of this was, that the men of science felt obliged to acknowledge that the Moulin Quignon discovery was not proved.

But ere long human bones were found in the deposits of the early Quaternary period, or indeed of an earlier period, in various other parts of the world, and the question regarding the Moulin Quignon relic was of little importance.

We have seen that researches regarding the existence of prehistoric man in England and on the Continent were at first mainly made in the caverns; but the existence of man in the earliest Quaternary period was confirmed on both sides the English Channel, in a way even more striking, by the close examination of the drift and early gravel deposits. The results arrived at by Boucher de Perthes were amply confirmed in England. Rude stone implements were found in terraces a hundred feet and more above the levels at which various rivers of Great Britain now flow, and under circumstances which show that, at the time when they were deposited, the rivers of Great Britain in many cases were entirely different from those of the present period, and formed parts of the river system of the European continent. Researches in the high terraces above the Thames, the Ouse, as well as at other points in Great Britain, placed beyond a doubt the fact that man existed on the British Islands at a time when they were connected by solid land with the Continent, and made it clear that, within the period of the existence of man in northern Europe, a large portion of the British Islands had been sunk to depths between fifteen hundred and twenty-five hundred feet beneath the Northern Ocean—had risen again from the water—had formed part of the continent of Europe, and had been in