in Tertiary strata. Reflection compels us to admit that these flints
were worked by the hand of man, and that they may have been used as
arrows or as knives."[12] Schmerling does not refer, though Lyell does,
and that in terms of high admiration, to the courage required for the
arduous work involved in the exploration of the caves referred to,
or to the yet more serious obstacles the professor had to overcome
in publishing conclusions opposed to the official science of the day.

In 1835, M. Joly, by his excavations in the Nabrigas cave, established
the contemporaneity of man with the cave bear, and a little later
M. Pomel announced his belief that plan had witnessed the last
eruptions of the volcanoes of Auvergne.

In spite of these discoveries, and the eager discussions to which
they led, the question of the antiquity of man and of his presence
amongst the great Quaternary animals made but little progress, and
it was reserved to a Frenchman, M. Boucher de Perthes, to compel the
scientific world to accept the truth.

It was in 1826 that Boucher de Perthes first published his opinion;
but it was not until 1816 and 1847 that he announced his discovery
at Menchecourt, near Abbeville, and at Moulin-Quignon and Saint
Acheul, in the alluvial deposits of the Somme, of flints shaped
into the form of hatchets associated with the remains of extinct
animals such as the mammoth, the cave lion, the RHINOCEROS INCISIVUS,
the hippopotamus, and other animals whose presence in France is not
alluded to either in history or tradition. The uniformity of shape,
the marks of repeated chipping, and the sharp edges so noticeable in
the greater number of these hatchets, cannot be sufficiently accounted
for either by the action of water, or the rubbing against each other