A few years later the reactionary clerical influence against
science in this field rallied again. Schmerling in 1833 had
explored a multitude of caverns in Belgium, especially at Engis
and Engihoul, and had found human skulls and bones closely
associated with bones of extinct animals, such as the cave bear,
hyena, elephant, and rhinoceros, while mingled with these were
evidences of human workmanship in the shape of chipped flint
implements; discoveries of a similar sort had been made by De
Serres in France and by Lund in Brazil; but, at least as far as
continental Europe was concerned, these discoveries were
received with much coolness both by Catholic leaders of opinion
in France and Belgium and by Protestant leaders in England and
Holland. Schmerling himself appears to have been overawed, and
gave forth a sort of apologetic theory, half scientific, half
theologic, vainly hoping to satisfy the clerical side.
Nor was it much better in England. Sir Charles Lyell, so devoted
a servant of prehistoric research thirty years later, was still
holding out against it on the scientific side; and, as to the
theological side, it was the period when that great churchman,
Dean Cockburn, was insulting geologists from the pulpit of York
Minster, and the Rev.
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