Page:Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe.djvu/199

Rh mongoloide" of M. Pruner-Bey. M. Hamy, in his notes on the Crane de Clichy, makes the following remarks in regard to the mixed skulls of the Seine deposits :—

Race de la Truchere.

During the seasonal low water in the month of September 1868, a skull was extracted from the bed of the Saône, near the mouth of the Seille, at a place called La Truchère, which also caused quite a sensation among anthropologists. It appears that a quantity of dead trees, especially oaks, with their branches intertwined, lay in the bed of the river said to be a forest-bed of geological remoteness which the inhabitants of La Truchère were hauling out for industrial purposes. Lying under a trunk just extracted, the workmen observed an isolated human skull, which they extracted and threw on the bank. It was taken possession of by M. Legrand de Mercey, who showed it at the time to M. Pruner-Bey, and subsequently sent a cast of it to MM. Quatrefages et Hamy. The skull, which was in an excellent state of preservation, lay 60 centimetres below the ordinary level of the river, and contained yellowish clay similar to that which formed the river-bed. There were no animal bones nor any relics associated with it. On a report that remains of the mammoth had been discovered in other beds which had a similar colour to the clay of La Truchère, MM. Quatrefages et Hamy inserted it in their Crania Ethnica, as representing a new brachycephalic race of the Palæolithic period. M. Quatrefages, under the heading Race de la Truchere, thus describes it :—