controversy was sharp and bitter for a time, it was speedily over, and the question which is still agitated--though mildly and in a sense wholly scientific--is whether man appeared in this part of Europe and in corresponding regions of North America, before, during, or after the glacial epoch? But the Engis skull is a relic exceptionally interesting. Though the handiwork of primæval man is common enough--rudely chipped instruments or weapons of flint or other stone, worked portions of bones and antlers, and such like--yet his bones are far less common than those of other mammals, and, most of all, skulls are rare. Professor Huxley, in his work from which we have already quoted, states that Dr. Schmerling found a bone implement in the Engis cave, and worked flints in all the ossiferous Belgian caves, yet this was the only skull in anything like a perfect condition, though another cavern furnished two fragments of parietal bones. Yet from the latter numerous bones of the extremities were obtained, and these had belonged to three individuals. What inferences, then, can be drawn from this skull as to the intellectual rank of primæval man? This question was discussed by its discoverer, and the evidence has been also considered by Professor Huxley. The former thus expressed his opinion, "that this cranium has belonged to a person of limited intellectual faculties, and we conclude thence that it belonged to a man of a low degree of civilisation; a deduction which is borne out by contrasting the capacity of the frontal with that of the occipital region." Professor Huxley sums up a careful discussion of the evidence, in which he calls special attention to points where it happens to be defective, by stating that the specimen agrees in certain respects with Australian skulls, in others with some European, but that he can find in the remains no character which, if it were a recent skull, would give any trustworthy clue to the race to which it might appertain. "Assuredly there is no mark of degradation about any part of its structure. It is, in fact, a fair average human skull, which might have belonged to a philosopher, or might have contained the thoughtless brains of a savage."[70]