inds being
thus prepared to receive new evidence, such evidence was not long
withheld.

FOSSIL MAN

Indeed, at the moment of Darwin's writing a new and very instructive
chapter of the geologic record was being presented to the public--a
chapter which for the first time brought man into the story. In 1859
Dr. Falconer, the distinguished British paleontologist, made a visit
to Abbeville, in the valley of the Somme, incited by reports that for
a decade before bad been sent out from there by M. Boucher de Perthes.
These reports had to do with the alleged finding of flint implements,
clearly the work of man, in undisturbed gravel-beds, in the midst of
fossil remains of the mammoth and other extinct animals. What Falconer
saw there and what came of his visit may best be told in his own words:

"In September of 1856 I made the acquaintance of my distinguished friend
M. Boucher de Perthes," wrote Dr. Falconer, "on the introduction of M.
Desnoyers at Paris, when he presented to me the earlier volume of his
Antiquites celtiques, etc., with which I thus became acquainted for the
first time. I was then fresh from the examination of the Indian fossil
remains of the valley of the Jumna; and the antiquity of the human race
being a subject of interest to both, we conversed freely about it,
each from a different point of view. M. de Perthes invited me to visit
Abbeville, in order to examine his antediluvian collection, fossil and
geological, gleaned from the valley of the Somme. This I was unable to
accomplish then, but I reserved it for a future occasion.

"In October, 1856, having determined to proceed to Sicily, I arranged
by correspondence with M. Boucher de Perthes to visit Abbeville on my
journey through France. I was at the time in constant communication
with Mr. Prestwich about the proofs of the antiquity of the human race
yielded by the Broxham Cave, in which he took a lively interest; and
I engaged to communicate to him the opinions at which I should arrive,
after my examination of the Abbeville collection. M. de Perthes gave me
the freest access to his materials, with unreserved explanations of all
the facts of the case that had come under his observation; and having
considered his Menchecourt Section, taken with such scrupulous care, and
identified the molars of elephas primigenius, which he had exhumed with
his own hands deep in that section, along with flint weapons, presenting
the same character as some of those fou