6

enjoy this privilege? The only Hector hitherto known to men is the Hector of the Iliad. But they formed an impression directly the reverse of that which is conveyed in our verb to hector.' For the Romance poetry of the Middle Ages, Hector was the ideal man among the ancients; and Orlando was a Hector plus Christianity. How this came about is not now the question; but I believe it to have been because the Roman tradition took possession of the field, and Roman tradition was shaped to decorate the fable of a Trojan descent for the Cæsars. The phrase is, as far as I know, confined to our own tongue; and I am not aware whether it came into use earlier than the Commonwealth. It is found in the Treatise on the Government of the Tongue, dated 1657.5 In the Merry Wives of Windsor we have the phrase 'bully Hector;' but it seems that this cannot mean a swaggerer; for just before it comes bully Hercules,' used by the Host in the same sense. I think the meaning may probably have been that Hector was set up as a great and truly imposing personage, and that to hector' meant to affect to be a Hector. In the same way, but here in common with the Italians and the French, we have used the name of Rodomonte in our word rhodomontade. Now the Rodomonte of the Romance poetry, though insolent and rude, was as far as possible from being a mere bragster. He is well described by Littré as renommé par sa vaillance, et par son caractère altier et insolent. He was in truth the most formidable of all the warriors, after Ruggiero: and rhodomontading can only mean pretending to be a Rodomonte. Where the original character is a mere bully, a Thraso or a Bobadil,' we do not find any similar formation. To treat Hector as merely or mainly a bully is much farther from the truth than the schoolboy dream which figures him as the pink of valour. He remains for us, a picture interesting in himself, vital to the effect of the piece in which he stands: a character in many points fine and even noble, but in all mobile; swayed, however, not by the breeze, but only by the blast. For great gifts of imagination, intellect, or enthusiasm, we must not turn to him, any more than for the primacy of war; but we may for the grave, the serious, the right-minded, growing freely in a kind and affectionate nature, ever desirous to repair its casual error or excess. He is the tolerable rival of the Achaian chiefs, but their admirably effective foil. Good as a child of Nature, he is superlative as a device of Art. He is likely to survive the ingenious assaults of Homeric dualism: and I hope to have left him, as I found him, in a whole skin.

5 Watts, Biblioth. Brit. Part i. 67, e.

W. E. GLADSTONE.

Act i. sc. 3. It is also in Andrew Marvell; and in Hudibras, 11. i. 352, but here, as in Shakespeare, associated with Hercules.

7 Terence, Eunuchus. Thrasonical in Shakespeare is in strict correspondence with the character of Thraso.

Ben Jonson, Every Man in his Humour, &c.

RECENT SCIENCE.

(PROFESSOR HUXLEY has kindly read, and aided the Compilers and the Editor with his advice upon, the following article.)

Ir the scientific departments of the Paris Exhibition fairly reflect the present state of science in France, then assuredly no branch of science enjoys at the present day greater popularity than the Science of Man. In the south-western corner of the Trocadéro Park there is a large building unassuming enough in its exterior, but stocked to repletion with objects of the deepest interest to the student of Anthropology. In addition, however, to this special Exposition des Sciences Anthropologiques,' it will be found that much of the historical collection, which has been got together in the great hemicycle of the Trocadéro, with the view of illustrating the progress of art, falls fairly within the ken of the anthropologist. Nor should it be overlooked that many of the courts in the principal building on the Champ de Mars-such as that which illustrates French scientific missions-contain a multitude of objects of no mean interest to the student of Ethnology.

The recent development of the Science of Man, and the popularity which it at present enjoys, may be traced mainly to two sources: first, to the attention which has been bestowed of late years on the relation of the physical organisation of man to that of the lower animals; and secondly, to the evidence which has been adduced with regard to the great antiquity of man. The latter subject is necessarily the more popular of the two, since it needs less technical knowledge for its due appreciation. So popular indeed has the study of prehistoric archæology become that by far the greater part of the anthropological collections now exhibited in Paris relates to this department of the science. Such an exhibition suggests a review of the present state of our knowledge respecting the antiquity of man. It is true that this subject attracted the attention of the Anthropological Institute so recently as last year, but the question was then discussed mainly with reference to recent discoveries, or presumed discoveries, in our own country. It may therefore be well in this place to give prominence to the present state of opinion on this subject among continental anthropologists.

Scarcely twenty years have passed since men of science were first. led to admit the existence of man as contemporary in Western

Europe with the extinct mammalia of Post-tertiary or Pleistocene age. It was only in 1859 that attention was seriously called to the famous discoveries of the late M. Boucher de Perthes. Careful search in the valley of the Somme had brought to light a number of rudely-chipped flint implements in gravels which also yielded the bones and teeth of the mammoth, of the woolly rhinoceros, and of other extinct mammalia. Discoveries of a like character-sometimes in ancient river-gravels, sometimes in caves-have since been multiplied to such a degree that the existence of palæolithic man in Quaternary times has taken its place among the best established facts of science. In short, the archæologist has gleaned so many facts which illustrate the life of our rude forefathers of the Pleistocene era that M. Broca, the eminent French anthropologist, was recently led to say that 'Quaternary man is now-a-days better known than many historical nations.' '

As it is not necessary, therefore, in this article to insist on the existence of man in the later stages of the Post-pliocene age, we shall turn to the evidence which has been put forward in support of a very much earlier origin of the human race-evidence which, if accepted, would indeed remove our earliest ancestors as far at least from Pleistocene man as Pleistocene man himself is removed from the dawn of history.

No discovery has yet been announced which would give to man a higher antiquity than that claimed for him by the late Abbé Bourgeois. More than ten years ago the Abbé announced his discovery of worked flints in beds of Miocene age at Thenay near Pontlevoy in the department of Loir-et-Cher.2 In this district, the Cretaceous rocks are overlaid by a series of fresh-water deposits known to French geologists as the Calcaire de Beauce.' The lower part of this series consist of marls and clays, while the upper part is calcareous. It was in the marly beds at the base of the series, and therefore in the oldest of these deposits, that the Abbé Bourgeois detected certain rudely chipped flints which he believed had been trimmed by art. Many of the flints bore the appearance of having been acted on by fire, and hence it was concluded that the flint-using beings of this remote age were sufficiently advanced to be acquainted

with the use of fire.

From the character of the fossils which have been found in the flint-bearing beds of Thenay, and from their stratigraphical position, it is inferred that these beds belong to the early part of that stage of the earth's history which is termed the Miocene period. In this

Address of M. Broca as President of the French Association for the Advancement of Science, at the Havre meeting, 1877. See translation in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute, Nov. 1877, p. 191.

2 'Etudes sur les Silex travaillés trouvés dans les dépôts tertiaires de la Commune de Thenay.' Compte-Rendu of the Paris Meeting of the International Congress of Prehistoric Archæology, in 1867, p. 67.

country there are but few scattered patches of strata which can be safely referred to the Miocene age, but on the continent such strata are developed on an enormous scale. Some idea of their position in the geological series may be gained from the fact that all the Miocene rocks are older than any of the Crags' of East Anglia, but none of them is so old as the London clay. The fossils found in the Miocene beds of Thenay include the extinct Proboscideans known as the Mastodon and the Dinotherium. Of the mastodon, indeed, three species have been found at Thenay, M. tapiroides, M. pyrenaicus, and M. angustidens. These extinct creatures are presumed to have been the contemporaries of the Miocene folk who lived near the lake of Beauce.

The Abbé Bourgeois, just before his death, sent some of his finest specimens to the Anthropological Department of the Paris Exhibition. A collection of these flints may be seen in the wall-case numbered 37; and there too, by their side, are the teeth of the mastodon. But the visitor who inspects this series of flints will hardly come away with a strong belief in the evidence which they are said to offer of human workmanship. Even those experts who have had the opportunity of leisurely handling them, generally turn away with a shake of the head. So much divided, indeed, has opinion been on this question, that, at the Brussels meeting of the International Congress in 1872, a committee of distinguished anthropologists was appointed to examine the evidence on which the Abbé and his friends relied.3 Unanimity of opinion was not reached, but several of the reporters evidently felt that the evidence was much too slender to carry the structure which had been raised upon it. Nevertheless the Thenay flints are commonly regarded in France as proving the existence of Miocene man, or, as M. Broca put it, 'the existence of an intelligent being who could work flint, and could only be man.'4 Thus, M. Gabriel de Mortillet, the distinguished Professor of Prehistoric Archæology in the Ecole d'Anthropologie of Paris, has given a place to Tertiary man in his scheme of classification of prehistoric times. The oldest period, which he designates the Eolithic, is represented by the Thenaisian' epoch." Just as the palæozoic rocks of the geologist were preceded by others which some authorities have termed Eozoic, so it is presumed the palæolithic period, which commenced in Pleistocene times, was preceded by an eolithic period which stretched back to the Miocene age. It is evident, therefore, that French archæologists feel justified in recognising an eolithic man who used flint and fire, and dwelt on the ancient lake

6

Sur les Silex considérés comme portant les marques d'un travail humain et découverts dans le terrain miocène de Thenay,' par M. l'Abbé Bourgeois. CompteRendu of the Brussels Congress.

4 Broca's Havre address, op. cit. p. 191. See also Nineteenth Century for June 1878, p. 1153.

s See large table exhibited on wall of the Exposition des sciences anthropologiques' at the Paris Exhibition.

of Beauce as far back as mid-tertiary times. To this view, however, they find few, if any, adherents among the foremost men of science in this country.

Immediately above the Miocene strata in the geological scale, and forming the uppermost division of the tertiary series, are those deposits which constitute the Pliocene formation. Although it may not be satisfactorily proved that man was of Miocene age, can it be shown that he lived in Western Europe during Pliocene times? To this question several continental anthropologists have unhesitatingly replied in the affirmative; but it can hardly be said that the evidence on which they rely has received general assent in this country. Perhaps the most important case which has been cited in proof of the existence of Pliocene man is that which was brought forward not long since by Professor Capellini. In pursuing his studies of fossil cetacea,. the professor was led to undertake, in 1875, some excavations at Poggiarone, near Monte Aperti, in Tuscany. There he discovered the remains of a cetacean belonging to Professor Van Beneden's genus Balanotus. This whale had previously been known from the Grey Crag of Antwerp; and the characters of the associated shells in the Tuscan bed showed that the deposit was here also of Pliocene age. The point of anthropological interest in connection with this discovery is the fact that some of the bones exhibit cuts which appear to have been made by man, or at least by 'some being who could use an instrument.' It is notable that the incisions are confined to certain bones, and to certain sides only of those bones. Professor Capellini maintains that the Balanotus must have been stranded on the shore of the Pliocene sea, and that the flesh was hacked off by man, possibly by means of the rude fiint tools which may have furnished him with his best cutting instruments.

While referring to this discovery, it should be mentioned that the Abbé Deo Gratias is reported to have found, as far back as 1856, human remains in clays on the same geological horizon in Liguria. It is believed too by palæontogical authorities in Italy, such as Dr. Forsyth Major, that the human skull which was found by Professor Cocchi in the upper valley of the Arno is of Pliocene age, and therefore more or less nearly contemporaneous with the incised bones of Poggiarone.

The cut bones of Capellini's Pliocene whale were described not long ago as les documents les plus sérieux qui aient été produits jusqu'à ce jour en faveur de l'homme tertiaire.' But, even admitting the Pliocene age of the deposit in which they occurred, it may still be fairly asked whether we are quite sure that the indentations

L'uomo pliocenico in Toscano.' Atti della R. Accademia dei Lincei, ser. ii. t. 3, Rome, 1876. Also 'Les Traces de l'Homme Pliocène en Toscane,' Compte-Renda of the Buda-Pest Meeting of the International Congress in 1876, p. 46.

* Matériaux pour l'Histoire primitive et naturelle de l'Homme, sér. ii. t. viii. 1877, p. 129.