When specimens of the flints from Thenay were first submitted to the Anthropological Congress at Brussels, in 1867, their human origin was admitted by MM. Worsae, de Vibraye, de Mortillet, and Schmidt, and rejected by MM. Nilson, Hebert, and others, while M. Quatrefages reserved his opinion, thinking a strong case made out, but not being entirely satisfied. M. Bourgeois himself was partly responsible for these doubts, for, like Boucher-de-Perthes, he had injured his case by overstating it, and including a number of small flints, which might have been, and probably were, merely natural specimens. But the whole collection having been transferred to the Archæological Museum at St. Germain, its director, M. Mortillet, selected those which appeared most demonstrative of human origin, and placed them in a glass case, side by side with similar types of undoubted Quaternary implements. This removed a great many doubts, and later discoveries of still better specimens of the type of scrapers have, in the words of Quatrefages, "dispelled his last doubts," while not a single instance has occurred of any convert in the opposite direction, or of any opponent who has adduced facts contradicting the conclusions of Quatrefages, Mortillet, and Hamy, after an equally careful and minute investigation. [Illustration: MIDDLE MIOCENE IMPLEMENTS. SCRAPER FROM THENAY. (Hamy, _Palæontologie Humaine_, p. 49.) SCRAPER, OR BORER. Thenay. (Showing bulb of percussion. Quatrefages, _Races Humaines_, p. 92.)] In order to assist the reader in forming an opinion as to the claim of these flints from Thenay, to show clear traces of human design, I subjoin some illustrations of photographs in which they are compared with specimens of later date, which are undoubtedly and by universal consent works of human hands, guided by human intelligence. These figures seem to leave no reasonable doubt that some at least of the flints from Thenay show unmistakable signs of human handiwork, and I only hesitate to accept them as conclusive proofs of the existence of man in the Middle Miocene, because such an authority as Prestwich retains doubts of their having come from the geological horizon accepted by the most eminent modern French geologists. [Illustration: MIDDLE MIOCENE IMPLEMENTS. BORER, OR AWL. Thenay. Miocene. (Congrès Préhistorique, Bruxelles, 1872.) KNIFE, OR SCRAPER. Thenay. (Gaudry. Quatrefages, p. 92.)]