Page:Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man.djvu/216

198 and we may well suppose that some human individuals, if any existed, would, together with wild animals, be occasionally overwhelmed in these tuffs. From near the place on the mountain whence the block with human bones now in the museum is said to have come, a stream of lava, well marked by its tabular structure, flowed down the flanks of the hill, within a few feet of the alluvial plain of the Borne, a small tributary of the Loire, on the opposite bank of which stands the town of Le Puy. Its continuous extension to so low a level clearly shows that the valley had already been deepened to within a few feet of its present depth at the time of the flowing of the lava.

We know that the alluvium of the same district, having a similar relation to the present geographical outline of the valleys, is of post-pliocene date, for it contains around Le Puy the bones of Elephas primigenius and Rhinoceros tichorhinus; and this affords us a palæontological test of the age of the human skeleton of Denise, if the latter be assumed to be coeval with the lava stream above referred to.

It is important to dwell on this point, because some geologists have felt disinclined to believe in the genuineness of the 'fossil man of Denise,' on the ground that, if conceded, it would imply that the human race was contemporary with an older fauna, or that of the Elephas meridionalis. Such a fauna is found fossil in another layer of tuff covering the slope of Denise, opposite to that where the museum specimen was exhumed. The quadrupeds obtained from that more ancient tuff comprise Elephas meridionalis, Hippopotamus major, Rhinoceros megarhinus, Antilope torticornis, Hyæna brevirostris, and twelve others of the genera horse, ox, stag, goat, tiger, &c., all supposed to be of extinct species. This tuff, found between Malouteyre and Polignac, M. Robert regards as the product of a much older eruption, and referable to the neighbouring Montague de St. Anne, a volcano in a much