How is it, then, that we have believed the traditionary story for so long and now reject it as absurd? People have believed the story of the creation according to Genesis partly because it was dangerous to do otherwise and partly because there was no absolute proof to the contrary. In 1774, however, a German of the name of Esper made a discovery which gave the finishing touch to the mortal wound inflicted upon the Christian and Jewish superstitions by the previous adoption of the Copernican system of astronomy; and, just as Copernicus, Bruno, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, and Newton drove the first half-dozen nails into the coffin of the Bible, so did this discovery of Esper drive into it the first of the last half-dozen, the remaining five to be subsequently added by Darwin, Huxley, Lyell, Spencer, and Carpenter. The discovery made by J. F. Esper consisted of some human bones, mingled with remains of the Northern bear and other species then unknown, which were lying in the famous cavern of Gailenreuth, in Bavaria; and this was soon followed by the discovery, in 1797, by John Frere, at Hoxne, in Suffolk, of a number of flint weapons, mixed up with bones of extinct animals, the whole being embedded in rocks. These and other similar discoveries made some sensation among scientific men, which resulted in the publication, in 1823, of Dr. Buckland’s “Reliquiæ Diluvianæ,” in which the author summed up all the facts then known tending to the establishment of the truth that man co-existed with animals long since extinct. Immediately after this, in 1826, Tournal, of Narbonne, gave to the world an account of some discoveries he had made in a cave in Aude (France), where he had found bones of the bison and reindeer, cut and carved by the hand of man, together with remains of edible shell-fish, which must have been brought there by some one who dwelt there. A few years afterwards De Christol, of Montpellier, discovered human bones and fragments of pottery, mixed with the remains of the Northern bear, hyæna, and rhinoceros, in the caverns of Pondres and Souvignargues. In 1833 Schmerling found in the caverns of Engis and Enghihoul, in Belgium, two human skulls, surrounded by teeth of the rhinoceros, elephant, bear, and hyæna, on some of which were marks of human workmanship, and under which were flint knives and arrow-heads. Two years afterwards Joly, a Montpellier professor, found in the cave of Nabrigas (Lozère) the skull of a cave-bear, having upon it marks made by an arrow, beside which were scattered fragments of pottery bearing the imprints of human fingers. Following upon these discoveries were those made in 1842 by Godwin Austen at Kent’s Cavern, near Torquay, consisting of animal remains and results of man’s handiwork; and those made in 1844, by Lund, in the caves of Brazil, consisting of skeletons of thirty human beings, an ape, various carnivora, rodents, pachyderms, sloths, etc. Kent’s Cavern, in 1847, was again the spot to