In the upper pliocene beds at St. Prest (France), M. Desnoyers found traces of human action on the bones of animals belonging to the tertiary. These fractures are analogous to those of human action observed on bones from the glacial period, and identical with those made by northern tribes of the present day, on the skulls of ruminants. The marked bones found were those of the Southern elephant (_E. meridionalis_), rhinoceros (_R. leptorinus_), hippopotamus major, several species of deer, and two of the ox. Carl Vogt states that this discovery is not only genuine, but also, the formation in which the bones were found is decidedly tertiary. It is further characterized by the presence of the southern elephant (_E. meridionalis_). As this elephant became extinct before the glacial age, the bones consequently precede the glacial, and the age of the cave-bear, the mammoth, and tichorrhine rhinoceros. The eminent French naturalist, Quatrefages, confirms the testimony of Desnoyers.[54] The conclusions of Desnoyers are confirmed beyond a doubt by the more recent discoveries of Abbé Bourgeois. In the same tertiary strata of St. Prest, in which were found the marked or fractured bones, Bourgeois discovered worked flints, including flakes, awls, and scrapers.[55] A human skull, belonging to the pliocene, was found by James Matson, at Altaville, in Calaveras county, California, at a depth of one hundred and thirty feet, under five beds of gravel separated by five layers of lava, associated with the bones of an extinct rhinoceros, camel, and horse. The base of the skull is imbedded in a mass of bone-breccia and small pebbles of volcanic rock. The shape of the skull resembles that of the Digger Indians, and is of remarkable thickness.[56] _Man in the Miocene._[57]--M. Bourgeois has found, in a stratum of miocene near Pontlevoy, numerous worked flints, and other flints which have been subjected to the action of heat. These works of man were associated with the remains of the acerotherium (an extinct species allied to the rhinoceros), and beneath five distinct beds, one of which contained the rolled bones of rhinoceros, mastodon, and dinotherium.[58] M. Tardy found a flint-flake of undoubted workmanship in the miocene beds of Aurillac (Auvergne), together with the remains of _dinotherium giganteum_, and _machaerodus latidens_.[59] M. Bourgeois reports that Abbé Delaunay had found near Pouance (Maine-et-Loire), fossil bones of a _halitherium_ (an herbivorous cetacean of the miocene), with evident signs of having been operated upon by cutting instruments.[60] In the miocene gravel beds of Colorado and Wyoming territories, chert-flakes, hammers, chisels, knives, and wrought shells have been found.[61] _Eocene._--As yet geologists have failed to discover any traces of man in the Eocene epoch. CHAPTER V. CONDITION OF MAN IN THE EARLIEST TIMES.