of nine of the main species of animals which, characterize the Quaternary period in Europe; upon them were marks of cutting implements, and in the midst of them coals and ashes.
Close upon these came the excavations at Eyzies by Lartet and his English colleague, Christy. In both these men there was a sobriety and a carefulness in making researches and in stating results which converted many of those who had been repelled by the enthusiasm of Boucher de Perthes. The two colleagues found buried together, in the stony deposits made by the water dropping from the roof of the cave at Eyzies, the bones of numerous animals extinct or departed to arctic regions, one of. these a vertebra of a reindeer with a flint lance-head still fast in it, and with these were found evidences of fire.
Discoveries like these were thoroughly convincing. But there still remained here and there a few gainsayers in the supposed interest of Scripture, and these, in spite of the convincing array of facts, insisted that in some way, by some combination of circumstances, these bones of extinct animals of vastly remote periods might have been brought into connection with all-these human bones and implements of human make in all these different places, without supposing that these ancient relics of men and animals were of the same period. But a new class of discoveries came to silence this contention. At La Madeleine in France, and at various other places, were found rude but striking carvings and engravings on bone and stone representing sundry specimens of those long-vanished species. These specimens, or casts of them, can now be seen in all the principal museums. They show the hairy mammoth, the cave bear, and various other animals of the Quaternary period, carved rudely but vigorously by contemporary men; and, to complete the significance of these discoveries, travelers returning from the icy regions of North America have brought similar carvings of animals now existing in those regions, made by the Eskimos during their long arctic winters to-day.[1]
- ↑ For the explorations in Belgium, see Dupont, Le Temps Préhistorique en Belgique. For the discoveries by McEnery and Godwin Austin, see Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, London, 1869, chap, x; also Cartailhac, Joly, and others above cited. For Boucher de Perthes, see his Antiquités Celtiques et Antédiluviennes, Paris, 1847–'64, vol. iii, pp. 526 et seq. For sundry extravagances of Boucher de Perthes, see Reinach, Description Raisonnée du Musée de St. Germain en Laye, Paris, 1889, vol. i, pp. 16 et seq. For the mixture of sound and absurd results in Boucher's work, see Cartailhac as above, p. 19. Boucher had published in 1838 a work entitled De la Création, but it seems to have dropped dead from the press. For the attempts of Scheuchzer to reconcile geology and Genesis by means of the Homo diluvii testis, and similar "diluvian fossils," see the chapter on Geology in this series. The original specimens of those prehistoric engravings upon bone and stone may be best seen at the Archæological Museum of St. Germain and the British Museum. For engravings of some of the most recent, see especially Dawkins's Early Man in Britain, chap. vii, and the Catalogue du Musée du St. Germain. For comparison of this prehistoric work with that
