[Footnote D:  An article in Blackwood, (October, 1860,) which is understood to be from the pen of Professor H.D.  Rogers, admits entirely that the flints are of human workmanship, and that it is impossible for them to have dropped through fissures, as, according to the writer’s observation of the deposits, it would be impossible even for a mole to penetrate them, so close are they.  Professor Rogers takes the ground that human antiquity is not proven from these relics, for two reasons:—­First, because the indications in the deposits inclosing the flints point clearly to a “turbulent diluvial action,” and therefore it is possible for a violent incursion of the ocean to have taken place in the historic period, and to have mixed up the more recent works of man with the previously buried bones or relics of a pre-historic period; and secondly, because the different geological deposits do not necessarily prove time, but only succession,—­two schools of geology interpreting all similar phenomena differently, as relating to the time required.

The last position would be admitted by few scientific geologists at the present day, as the evidence for time, though inferential from the deposits known to us, is held generally to be conclusive.  On the first point, Professor Rogers has the weight of authority against him:  all the great masters of the science, who have examined the formation and the deposits of the surrounding country, denying that there is any evidence of an incursion of the ocean of such a nature, during the historic period.]

The chain of evidence in regard to this important question seems to be filled out by a recent discovery of M. Edouard Lartet in Aurignac, in the South of France, on the head-waters of the Garonne.  As we have just observed, the weak point in M. de Perthes’s discoveries was the absence of human bones in the deposits investigated, though this might have been accounted for by the withdrawal of human beings from the floods of the period.  M. Lartet’s investigations have fortunately been conducted in a spot which was above the reach of the ordinary inundations of the Drift Period, and whither human beings might have fled for refuge, or where they might have lived securely during long spaces of time.

Some ten years since, in Aurignac, (Haute Garonne,) in the Arrondissement of St. Gaudens, near the Pyrenees, a cavern was discovered in the nummulitic rock.  It had been concealed by a heap of fragments of rock and vegetable soil, gradually detached and accumulated, probably by atmospheric agency.  In it were found the human remains, it was estimated, of seventeen individuals, which were afterwards buried formally by the order of the mayor of Aurignac.  Along with the bones were discovered the teeth of mammals, both carnivora and herbivora; also certain small perforated corals, such as were used by many ancient peoples as beads, and similar to those gathered in the deposits of Abbeville.  The cave had apparently