Page:Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe.djvu/340

254 means inconsistent with the opinion that they belonged to the same age as those from Mas-d'Azil. The contents of the cave having been largely removed by the proprietor before the matter came under the notice of the explorers, there remained only a small portion of undisturbed material from which the relative sequence of the deposits could be ascertained. So far as the contents of the deposits were determined, they were as follows, from above downwards :—

(a) A bed of blackish earth containing clay, charcoal, angular pieces of the limestone rock, and shells (Helix nemoralis), mostly very much broken. The soil, generally loose, was here and there cemented by stalagmitic deposits. Bones of the red-deer, ox, and horse, together with small worked flints and minute fragments of pottery, were also collected in it.

(b) Then came a veritable breccia of rabbit-bones, mixed with charcoal, ashes, and angular pieces of rock, the whole cemented by a stalagmitic matrix. It also contained, especially in its lower portion, the bones of larger animals, and one of the explorers found in it a portion of a slender bone ornamented by cut notches like a tally stick.

(c) The next stratum was of great thickness (over 6 feet), and presented a reddish colour which it had gradually assumed. Its substance was a homogeneous clayey earth mixed with the usual angular fragments from the walls of the cave, in which were found many flint implements and worked bones, some of the latter being characteristic of the Reindeer period.

In classifying these three deposits according to the remains of the fauna collected in them, the authors state that the superficial layer (a) represented the Neolithic period, and that both (b) and (c] corresponded with the Reindeer Age. After contrasting the scarcity of the remains of the reindeer with the abundance of those of the red-deer, and commenting on the almost entire absence of the extinct and emigrated