Page:Excavations at the Kesslerloch.djvu/32

Rh here may amount probably to seventeen. Neither their teeth nor their bones are at all different from those of the present wolf, so that we may conclude that this veteran, of which so much has been said in the oldest histories and legends, has remained unchanged for thousands of years. It is one of the few animals which are able to adapt themselves to all varieties of climate. It has now withdrawn from this peaceful valley, never more to return to it. And yet it is widely distributed. It has become rare in Switzerland. Evidently its flesh was eaten by the cave-dwellers of the Kesslerloch, as well as that of all the animals found there, for all its bones were broken in pieces, like those of other animals, which certainly would not have been the case if the flesh of the wolf had not been used for food. Without doubt the wolf was not a welcome visitor to our Troglodytes: not only their safety, but even their very existence was endangered by its presence; for the wolf and the glutton were the most deadly enemies of the reindeer, to which the cave-dwellers owed so much, for, as with the modern Esquimaux, it furnished them with both food and clothing.

The fox tribe was not wanting, for the remains of Canis vulpes, Canis fulvus, and Canis lagopus were met with. Of the first only a very few teeth were found—at the most two or three; of the second ninety pieces of the under-jaw, representing forty- five to fifty individuals; and of the last forty-six under-jaws from at least twenty to thirty individuals, so that altogether there were about eighty animals. The upper-jaws and other parts of the skeleton of all three species were found in the cave, but singularly enough, very rarely. So that the common fox at that time was not very numerous in our district, but the remains of the Arctic fox and the North American red fox are found in greater abundance. The first at the present day is known only in the most northern parts of the Old and the New World, where the ice spreads out in enormous plains. It has consequently entirely withdrawn from the modern fauna of Thayngen, and this probably is the most striking argument in favour of the former rigour of the climate. Canis fulvus is no longer found in Europe, but only in the northern parts of North America. There is considerable doubt whether the domestic dog (Canis familiaris) was an occupier of the Kesslerloch or not. Its presence here would, as before remarked, lead us with great probability to conclude that both the reindeer and the horse were also domesticated. Professor Rütimeyer himself says that it cannot be positively decided