Page:Excavations at the Kesslerloch.djvu/26

Rh the remains of which are met with but sparingly in the cave of Thayngen; the few teeth and bones which have been found there indicate only about half a dozen individuals. The size of the bones is striking, for they approach in dimensions nearer to those of the wapiti or Cervus canadensis, than those of the red stag of the present day. Consequently we meet here with exactly the same phenomenon as at Veyrier, at the Robbers' cave at Schelmengraben, and in most of the lake-dwellings. As the investigations of the caves of Belgium by Dupont have proved the existence at that period of this greatest of living stags, it may not, as it appears, be very improbable that some of these larger bones may have belonged to the Cervus canadensis, which now wanders about in North America. It would certainly be of great interest if this phenomenon were confirmed by other discoveries. In early ages the red stag abounded in our country and Switzerland, as may be proved by the remains of bones in the lake-dwellings, where they are found in great quantities. But at the present time this noble beast is not to be found in our country, and it is of very rare occurrence in a great part of Germany. It is still abundant in Poland, Austria, and in the Caucasus, so that it seems limited to a breadth of land between the 45th and 65th degrees of north latitude. Consequently it overlaps (so to speak) the limits of the reindeer, and therefore exists at the present day together with it, and yet it prefers a temperate rather than a cold climate. From the fact that the red stag's remains are met with very sparingly in the Kesslerloch, while on the contrary they are abundant in the lake-dwellings, we may conclude that our climate had become milder during that interval of time. The only reason why the animal is not living amongst us at the present day is that it has been very severely hunted, so that it has become peculiarly shy and fearful.

The remains of the urus, ur, or Bos primigenius, were still more rare than those of the stag; only some small bones were found, chiefly those of the feet, and fragments of the skull and the medullary bones. The animal is extinct, but the remains of it found in England, Scotland, in the Danish kitchen-middens, in Sweden, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Austria, prove to a certainty that it must have spread over the whole of Europe. It is not so very long since it disappeared from the face of the earth. Even in Cæsar's time the urus was to be found in the Hercynian forests, and consequently it lived there at the same time as the reindeer. He describes these