Page:Excavations at the Kesslerloch.djvu/13

Rh the leading physician of the place, is the President, that the Society was to pay the whole expense of the excavation, and to receive one half of the objects found; the other half was to repay Mr. Merk for the trouble he took in superintending the excavation.

It may be well imagined that Dr. Von Mandach and his coadjutors at Schaffhausen looked very narrowly after the products of the excavation, for the cave was only a few minutes distant from them by railway, and the Society had engaged to spend a considerable sum of money. The progress of the excavation is given in the following pages; and it seems to me that if evidence is of any value at all, we have here one of the strongest cases in which antiquities, excavated under proper superintendence, may be considered as genuine.

One half of the collection was sold by the discoverer to the Constance Museum; the other half remains in the Museum at Schaffhausen. This portion was carefully examined by my archaeological friend and myself, and I believe I am correct in saying that neither of us have the slightest doubt as to its being; genuine. The mere fact of the drawings being so much better executed than those of Aquitaine (a fact, however, which Mr. Franks doubts) is no real argument against them, as the objection on this score arises merely from a preconceived but unproved notion that all cave-dwellers must have been of so low a grade as to be totally incapable of any knowledge of art.

There are, however, two specimens which are not included in the collection at Schaffhausen, and respecting these it is perfectly natural to have grave doubts. They have been drawn by Mr. Merk, and also by Professor Rütimeyer in his late work on the Swiss Fauna, as will be seen in the Appendix. The drawings are therefore reproduced here. The story of the discovery of these two specimens is given in a note appended to the description, and I have not scrupled to tell the