fficed to recompose the
skeletons of the organic beings which lay in this magnificent osseous
collection.

I was utterly confounded. My uncle stood for some minutes with his arms
raised on high towards the thick granite vault which served us for a
sky. His mouth was wide open; his eyes sparkled wildly behind his
spectacles (which he had fortunately saved), his head bobbed up and down
and from side to side, while his whole attitude and mien expressed
unbounded astonishment.

He stood in the presence of an endless, wondrous, and inexhaustibly rich
collection of antediluvian monsters, piled up for his own private and
peculiar satisfaction.

Fancy an enthusiastic lover of books carried suddenly into the very
midst of the famous library of Alexandria burned by the sacrilegious
Omar, and which some miracle had restored to its pristine splendor! Such
was something of the state of mind in which Uncle Hardwigg was now
placed.

For some time he stood thus, literally aghast at the magnitude of his
discovery.

But it was even a greater excitement when, darting wildly over this mass
of organic dust, he caught up a naked skull and addressed me in a
quivering voice:

"Harry, my boy--Harry--this is a human head!"

"A human head, Uncle!" I said, no less amazed and stupefied than
himself.

"Yes, nephew. Ah! Mr. Milne-Edwards--ah! Mr. De Quatrefages--why are you
not here where I am--I, Professor Hardwigg!"

CHAPTER 35

DISCOVERY UPON DISCOVERY

In order fully to understand the exclamation made by my uncle, and his
allusions to these illustrious and learned men, it will be necessary to
enter into certain explanations in regard to a circumstance of the
highest importance to paleontology, or the science of fossil life, which
had taken place a short time before our departure from the upper regions
of the earth.

On the 28th of March, 1863, some navigators under the direction of M.
Boucher de Perthes, were at work in the great quarries of
Moulin-Quignon, near Abbeville, in the department of the Somme, in
France. While at work, they unexpectedly came upon a human jawbone
buried fourteen feet below the surface of the soil. It was the first
fossil of the kind that had ever been brought to the light of day. Near
this unexpected human relic were found stone hatchets and carved flints,
colored and clothed by time in one uniform brilliant tint of verdigris.

The report of this extraordinary and unexpected discovery spread n