But in using the term Tertiary Man, I do not venture to define the exact meaning of "man," or the precise stage in his evolution which had been attained at this enormously remote period. M. Gaudry, an excellent authority, while admitting that the flints from Thenay showed evidence of intentional chipping, thought that they might have been the work of the Dryopithecus, a fossil ape, supposed to be nearer man than any existing anthropoid, whose remains had been found at Sausan in the Middle Miocene. But the Dryopithecus has been deposed from his pride of place by the subsequent discovery of a more perfect jaw, and he is now considered, though undoubtedly an anthropoid ape, to be of a lower type than the chimpanzee or gorilla.[13] The strongest argument however for the essentially human character of the artificers of the flints of Thenay and Puy Courny is that their type continues, with no change except that of slight successive improvements, through the Pliocene, Quaternary, and even down to the present day. The scraper of the Esquimaux and the Andaman islanders is but an enlarged and improved edition of the Miocene scraper, and in the latter case the stones seem to have been split by the same agency, viz. that of fire. The early knowledge of fire is also confirmed by the discovery, reported by M. Bourgeois in the Orleans Sand at Thenay, with bones of mastodon and dinotherium, of a stony fragment mixed with carbon, in a sort of hardened paste, which, as we can hardly suppose pottery to have been known, must be the remnant of a hearth on which there had been a fire. [13] Having applied to Professor Flower, as the highest authority, to inform me of the actual position of the evidence as to the Dryopithecus, he was good enough to reply to me as follows-- "Dryopithecus (Middle Miocene of France) is an undoubted anthropoid, allied to gorilla and chimpanzee, but the recent discovery of a more complete jaw than that first found shows that it is rather a lower form than the two just mentioned, instead of higher as once thought. See Gaudry, Mem. Soc. Geol. France--_Palæontologie_, 1890. "The animal called _Pliopithecus_, from the same formation, is now generally considered to be not distinguishable from the genus Hylobates (Gibbon). "So there is no doubt about the existence of anthropoid apes in the Miocene of Europe, but not of a higher type than the present African or Asiatic species. Yours truly, "W. FLOWER."