Page:Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe.djvu/125

Rh Kesslerloch Cave.

The cave known as Kesslerloch, so called because it has been a frequent place of resort of travelling tinkers, is distant some ten minutes from Thayngen, and a little more than a quarter of an hour by railway from Schaffhausen, on the line to Constance. In 1873 the school children of Thayngen, under their teacher Conrad Merk, made a botanical excursion to the neighbourhood, and while searching for rare plants, discovered bones and flint implements in the cave. This discovery led to its excavation by Mr Merk, under the auspices of the Schaffhausen Natural History Society. The results, which turned out to be exceptionally valuable, were published as an illustrative monograph in the Proceedings of the Antiquarian Society at Zurich for 1875.

The cave opens by two entrances in face of a steep wall of white limestone rock, the last outpost of the Swiss Jura. The largest opening is 41 feet wide, and 11$1⁄4$ feet high, and extends inwards for about 51 feet; but these dimensions become rapidly smaller in the interior, so that at 25 feet from the opening the breadth is only 31 feet, and the height only 6 feet. The area actually covered by the cave is about 2000 square feet. The uppermost bed consisted of a mass of rubbish formed of large and small angular stones, like the rocks on either side. This bed is thickest in front, where it amounted to from 47 to 55 inches, probably owing to its greater exposure to atmospheric influences, but in the inner recesses it was reduced to a few inches. Beneath the superficial rubbish came the first relic bed, which varied in thickness from 4 to 15 inches, and was composed of a black material containing relics and a mass of bones. On this bed, and partly embedded in it, were two large patches of stalagmite from 12 to 18 inches thick, both of which contained on their underside some bones and flints. Underneath the black relic bed there was another deposit, coloured red with oxide of iron, and extending over the whole of the cave, which also contained bones and relics.