uckland published a discussion of the
subject, in the light of various discoveries in the drift and in caves.
It received wide attention, but theology was soothed by his temporary
concession that these striking relics of human handiwork, associated
with the remains of various extinct animals, were proofs of the Deluge
of Noah.

In 1823 Boue, of the Vienna Academy of Sciences, showed to Cuvier sundry
human bones found deep in the alluvial deposits of the upper Rhine,
and suggested that they were of an early geological period; this Cuvier
virtually, if not explicitly, denied. Great as he was in his own field,
he was not a great geologist; he, in fact, led geology astray for many
years. Moreover, he lived in a time of reaction; it was the period of
the restored Bourbons, of the Voltairean King Louis XVIII, governing
to please orthodoxy. Boue's discovery was, therefore, at first opposed,
then enveloped in studied silence.

Cuvier evidently thought, as Voltaire had felt under similar
circumstances, that "among wolves one must howl a little"; and his
leading disciple, Elie de Beaumont, who succeeded, him in the sway over
geological science in France, was even more opposed to the new view
than his great master had been. Boue's discoveries were, therefore,
apparently laid to rest forever.(185)

(185) For the general history of early views regarding stone implements,
see the first chapters in Cartailhac, La France Prehistorique; also
Jolie, L'Homme avant les Metaux; also Lyell, Lubbock, and Evans. For
lightning-stones in China and elsewhere, see citation from a Chinese
encyclopedia of 1662, in Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 209. On the
universality of this belief, on the surviving use of stone implements
even into civilized times, and on their manufacture to-day, see ibid.,
chapter viii. For the treatment of Boue's discovery, see especially
Morillet, Le Prehistorique, Paris, 1885, p. 11. For the suppression of
the passage in Montesquieu's Persian Letters, see Letter 113, cited in
Schlosser's History of the Eighteenth Century (English translation),
vol. i, p. 135.

In 1825 Kent's Cavern, near Torquay, was explored by the Rev. Mr.
McEnery, a Roman Catholic clergyman, who seems to have been completely
overawed by orthodox opinion in England and elsewhere; for, though
he found human bones and implements mingled with remains of extinct
animals, he kept his notes in manuscript, and they were only brought to
light mo