Page:Excavations at the Kesslerloch.djvu/40

Rh together, and the occurrence of which together at the same time evidently indicates the same conditions of life.

The similarity of the Thayngen fauna with that of Belgium is still more striking. All the animals found in the Kesslerloch, with the exception of the birds, occur also in Belgium. On the other hand, the Belgian caves have certain characteristic animals, as, for example, the giant stag, the cave-bear, the cave- hyæna, the Elephas antiquus and the Rhinoceros Merkii, and probably a few more. The prehistoric fauna is consequently richly represented there. But if we consider that the fifty species (or thereabouts) in the Belgian fauna have been procured from thirty-eight different caves, the similarity between the fauna of Belgium and Thayngen, bearing in mind that the latter is in Northern Switzerland, is very striking. This fact leads to the undoubted conclusion that both countries must evidently at one time have had an Arctic climate, which quite agrees with the views of geologists.

Even the fauna of the Swabian and French caves exhibit a great agreement with that of the Kesslerloch, so that from this fact we are led to the conclusion that not only Switzerland and Belgium, but generally the whole of North and Middle Europe, must have had an Arctic climate. The only difference seems to be that at Thayngen, as already remarked, the cave-bear is wanting, while in the Swabian caves it is very numerous, and in some French and Belgian caves it occurs in considerable numbers. The fact of this animal not being found at Kesslerloch is at the first moment somewhat surprising, and might almost lead to the idea that the discoveries in our cave may be of later date than those of the above-named caves. But if we consider that in certain Belgian caves, which, according to Dupont, were inhabited at the age of the mammoth, the cave-bear is not to be found, and moreover that, like the mammoth, the rhinoceros, and the cave-lion, it is not to be found in all the Belgian and French caves of the reindeer age, we may from this conclude that our bone remains are in any case as old as the greater proportion of the oldest bones found broken in caves. But still it is not improbable that those caves where the cave-bear is found most abundantly as the chief beast of prey were the oldest caves inhabited. M. Lartet is therefore correct in dividing the time when man lived in caves and used stone as his only tool into four periods, viz., that of the cave-bear, that of the mammoth, that of the reindeer, and that of polished stone; and according to this, our cave remains would have to be placed