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Schmerling of Liege, a skilful anatomist and palaeontologist, after devoting several years to the exploring of the numerous ossiferous caverns which border the valleys of the Meuse and its tributaries, published two volumes descriptive of the contents of more than forty caverns.
Schmerling being careful, whenever a fragment of such presented itself, to explore the cavern himself, and see whether any other bones of the same skeleton could be found. In the Engis cavern, distant about eight miles to the south-west of Liege, on the left bank of the Meuse, the remains of at least three human individuals were disinterred.
As Professor Schmerling observes, the base of the skull is destroyed, and the facial bones are entirely absent; but the roof of the cranium, consisting of the frontal, parietal, and the greater part of the occipital bones, as far as the middle of the occipital foramen, is entire or nearly so. The left temporal bone is wanting.
One important point remains obscure. Schmerling has excavated fifty caves in Belgium, and only found human relics in two or three of them; and of six hundred explored by Lund in Brazil, only six contained human bones. Similar results were obtained in the excavations of the mounds of North America, as well as in the caves of France.
Schmerling, after finding extinct mammalia and FLINT TOOLS in forty-two Belgian caverns, was only rewarded by the discovery of human bones in three or four of those rich repositories of osseous remains.
Another enigma which led Schmerling astray in some of his geological speculations was the supposed presence of the agouti, a South American rodent, "proper to the torrid zone."
Of athletic build, striking beauty, great agility and versatility in all bodily exercises, an unrivalled fencer, and a perfect marksman. What a soldier he would have made! But Mr. Schmerling knew a good many fine tricks, and one of the prettiest was the prevention of Hungarian youths from entering the army. He took advantage of the prevalent Chauvinistic sentiments, and put them forward as a bait.
This "lasting and irrevocable Constitution of the Empire" was revoked on February 26, 1861, when Schmerling succeeded Goluchowski, and the so-called "February Constitution" was introduced by an arbitrary decree which in essence was still more dualistic than the October Diploma and gave undue representation to the nobility.
The calcareous stone, in the heart of which the cavities once existed, had been quarried away, and removed bodily for building and lime-making. Fortunately, a great part of the Engihoul cavern, situated on the right bank of the Meuse, was still in the same state as when Schmerling delved into it in 1831, and drew from it the bones of three human skeletons.
Bones and teeth of the cave-bear were soon found, and several other extinct quadrupeds which Schmerling has enumerated.
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