at present, propose to enter. It is enough that such a view of
the relations of extinct to living beings has been propounded, to lead
us to inquire, with anxiety, how far the recent discoveries of human
remains in a fossil state bear out, or oppose, that view.

I shall confine myself, in discussing this question, to those
fragmentary Human skulls from the caves of Engis in the valley of
the Meuse, in Belgium, and of the Neanderthal near Dusseldorf, the
geological relations of which have been examined with so much care
by Sir Charles Lyell; upon whose high authority I shall take it for
granted, that the Engis skull belonged to a contemporary of the Mammoth
('Elephas primigenius') and of the woolly Rhinoceros ('Rhinoceros
tichorhinus'), with the bones of which it was found associated; and that
the Neanderthal skull is of great, though uncertain, antiquity. Whatever
be the geological age of the latter skull, I conceive it is quite safe
(on the ordinary principles of paleontological reasoning) to assume
that the former takes us to, at least, the further side of the vague
biological limit, which separates the present geological epoch from
that which immediately preceded it. And there can be no doubt that the
physical geography of Europe has changed wonderfully, since the bones
of Men and Mammoths, Hyaenas and Rhinoceroses were washed pell-mell into
the cave of Engis.

The skull from the cave of Engis was originally discovered by Professor
Schmerling, and was described by him, together with other human remains
disinterred at the same time, in his valuable work, 'Recherches sur les
ossemens fossiles decouverts dans les cavernes de la Province de Liege',
published in 1833 (p. 59, et seq.), from which the following paragraphs
are extracted, the precise expressions of the author being, as far as
possible, preserved.

"In the first place, I must remark that these human remains, which are
in my possession, are characterized like thousands of bones which I have
lately been disinterring, by the extent of the decomposition which
they have undergone, which is precisely the same as that of the extinct
species: all, with a few exceptions, are broken; some few are rounded,
as is frequently found to be the case in fossil remains of other
species. The fractures are vertical or oblique; none of them are eroded;
their colour does not differ from that of other fossil bones, and varies
from whitish yellow to blackish. All are lighter than re