Page:Antiquity of Man as Deduced from the Discovery of a Human Skeleton.djvu/34

28 which, containing marrow, had such medullary cavities exposed, included those of reindeer, bouquetin, chamois, primigenial ox, wild horse, besides birds and river-fish, those of the reindeer being by far the most abundant. The great proportion of the latter indicated a climate more nearly arctic or glacial than now prevails in that latitude, and suggest geographical changes, such as have induced a "gulf-stream" for example, operating to bring about the climatal conditions of the present "south of France."

In my 'Letter' to the 'Principal Librarian of the British Museum,' of date January 24, 1864, I stated, among the facts in favour of the purchase of the "Brumquel Collection," that "Two implements exhibit an outline of an animal's head finely cut;" and I added that "they are the earliest known works of graphic art representing a species now extinct in temperate Europe".

The care and pains subsequently applied to researches in ossiferous caves on the Continent and in England have satisfied the geologist of the prehistoric antiquity of our species; but I have been the recipient of doubts lingering in the minds of accomplished non-geological visitors as to the unquestionable value or trustworthiness of cave-evidence. "Show us," they have said, "the remains of man's body fossilized in any degree, that have been discovered in stratified deposits, at a depth, and beneath successive formations, the interpretation of which supports a reference to the Palæolithic era of post-Pliocene time."