Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/28

18 this last specimen several flint blades, one on each shoulder and one resting on the top of the head. It was 8·40 metres below the original floor.

Of the three skeletons discovered in February, 1892, Mr. Vaughan Jennings gave a description in an article to which we will refer later on. They also were found in the fifth cave, but a very little further within its depths than those of 1884, and were first noticed by workmen who were blasting and hewing the face of the cliff for stone. During this work they gradually destroyed the sides of the high cleft or cave, and in removing the hard earth that filled its floor to some eight or ten feet in depth, at the distance of about twenty-five metres from its original entrance, they came upon a skull which, unfortunately, was broken by the blow from a man's pickaxe, or, as some say by the energetic digging of one of Abbo's young sons with the iron instrument used for sinking holes for blasting. From that moment, but not with sufficient care, the skeletons, lying side by side, were unearthed and rapidly robbed of the flints and ornaments found about them, with the result that none can be certain in what position Abbo found them. At first only two were entirely visible—those of a man and a woman—but soon a third, that of a youth, lying between the two, came to light. They lay seven metres and a half below the original floor. All are of great size; the skulls being broken and the skeletons half in the earth, exact measurement of the height was very difficult at the time; but both then and since the skulls have been pieced together we have managed to take some sort of measurement, showing the biggest skeleton, from the crown of the skull to the heel, to be six feet ten inches and a half, and the other two about six feet six inches and a half. If, then, we allow for the shrinking of the tendons and for the flesh on the heels and head, the man must have stood about seven feet four inches, and the others, to whom the remaining skeletons belonged, about seven feet and half an inch at most. No child was found, as was erroneously stated by a newspaper. The skulls are of unusual size and thickness, the frontal bone being at least a quarter of an inch thick, and the parietal and occipital bones fully three quarters of an inch. The occiput in one of them is enormous, and is very much larger and out of proportion to the rest of the cranium, being expanded lengthwise, while in another it is the parietal bones which exhibit excessive extension. The orbital cavities are unusually large and curiously curved up at the outer corners. The bones, too, are of great thickness; they are, however, most friable; to the slightest touch many of them will crumble, and all