Page:Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man.djvu/199

Rh the Somme, Thames, or Severn, making timely retreat to the south before the snow and ice set in.

I have alluded in the beginning of the fourth chapter (p. 5859 [sic]) to a custom prevalent among rude nations of consigning to the tomb works of art, once the property of the dead or objects of their affection, and even of storing up, in many cases, animal food destined for the manes of the defunct in a future life. I also cited M. Desnoyers' comments on the absence among the bones of wild and domestic animals found in old Gaulish tombs of all intermixture of extinct species of quadrupeds, as proving that the oldest sepulchral monuments then known in France (1845) had no claims to high antiquity founded on palæontological data.

M. Lartet, however, has recently published a circumstantial account of what seems clearly to have been a sepulchral vault of the post-pliocene period, near Aurignac, not far from the foot of the Pyrenees. I have had the advantage of inspecting the fossil bones and works of art obtained by him from that grotto, and of conversing and corresponding with him on the subject, and can see no grounds for doubting the soundness of his conclusions.

The town of Aurignac is situated in the department of the Haute Garonne, near a spur of the Pyrenees; adjoining it is the small flat-topped hill of Fajoles, about sixty feet above the brook called Rodes, which flows at its foot on one side. It consists of nummulitic limestone, presenting a steep escarpment towards the north-west, on which side in the face of the