Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, May 1899: Volume LV, No. 1, May 1899Various
History
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, May 1899: Volume LV, No. 1, May 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
offered to them on the subject." The discoveries are thought to have
had a considerable share in disposing Mr. Prestwich to undertake the
investigation of the remains at Amiens and Abbeville in France and
Hoxne in England, "which added to his own great reputation and rescued
M. Boucher de Perthes from undeserved neglect." Prof. Boyd Dawkins
says that they established beyond all doubt the existence of
paleolithic man in the Pleistocene age, and caused the whole of the
scientific world to awake to the fact of the vast antiquity of the
human race. Of course, they aroused a theological controversy which
was long and bitter, and has only recently died out. Pengelly had no
trouble through it all. "Geologists," he said, "see no mode of
reconciling the Mosaic account of creation with geological science....
For myself, I am satisfied that science can do nothing for the
salvation of the soul, and that the Bible is able, through God's
grace, to make us wise unto salvation." No doubts or difficulties
could ever undermine his faith as a Christian.
The evidence accumulated at Brixham suggested the propriety of a
re-examination of other evidences of man's antiquity, and
particularly, in England, of those from Kent's Hole, or Cavern, at
Torquay. The existence of this cave had been known from time
immemorial, but the first recorded exploration of it was made in 1824
by Mr. Northmore, of Cleve, looking for organic remains and an ancient
temple of Mithras. Mr. W. C. Trevelyan followed him, and first
obtained results of value to science. The Rev. J. MacEnery, a Roman
Catholic priest, began a four years' exploration of the cave in 1825,
and prepared a narrative of his work, which was not published for
several years after his death, having been lost, and found by Pengelly
after a long search. He showed that the cave had been inhabited,
practically at the same time, by man and various extinct animals; but
the antiquity of man not being yet a live subject, little regard was
paid to his evidences. With a grant of a hundred pounds from the
British Association, the work was begun under the direction of a
committee of which Pengelly was the leading spirit and the working
member. It opened a new chapter in his life, his daughter says, "for
he not only superintended the exploration of the cavern, but undertook
its entire management, throwing himself, heart and soul, into the
numerous duties which it entailed. The labor was arduous, and severely
taxed his energies for fifteen years; but it was a congenial
employment, and most faithfully performed.... After undertaking the
exploration, Pengelly became such an enthusiast in the progress made
that, when in Torquay, he never (unless prevented by illness) failed
on a single week day to visit the cavern, while he devoted many hours
at home in the examination of the specimens exhumed. He even abridged
his short holidays, and all idea of living in London was abandoned on
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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