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