Page:Smithsonian Report (1898).djvu/411

Rh charcoal and ashes, burnt and calcined bones, together with worked flints, bones, and ivory. Among the animal remains are those of mam- moth, woolly rhinoceros, musk ox, reindeer, elk, horse, lion, glutton, bear, wolf, arctic fox, common fox, and hyena. Nor is it only in the loss that we have human relics associated with the tundra and steppe faunas. Similar finds have been recorded from many caves and rock shelters, of which we may take the rock shelter of the Schweizersbild, near Schaffhausen, as a good example. The deposits at that place show a clear succession, and tell a highly interesting tale. The following is the sequence, the beds being numbered from below upward :

With the lowest bed (No. 1) we need not at present concern ourselves, beyond remarking that it is obviously of fluviatile origin. All the overlying beds are clearly of subaerial formation—the flooded torrential water, which laid down the gravel bed (No. 1), had left the rock shelter high and dry before the succeeding lemming bed began to accumulate. This latter is a yellowish earth, charged with fragments of limestone detached by the weather from the overhanging rock. Scattered through this earth are abundant remains of arctic lemming, arctic fox, mountain hare, reindeer, glutton, and a number of other forms which are constant summer visitors to the tundras. The banded lemming is the most plentifully represented species, and next to it in abundance comes the alpine hare. In close association with this tundra fauna occur flint implements, and awls, chisels, harpoons, and needles of bone and horn. Only one old hearth, with its ashes, was encountered, and from the fact that no calcined bones were met with, while the number of worked bones and antlers was relatively small, it may be inferred that man was not a persistent occupant of the rock shelter during the slow accumulation of the lemming bed. The same conclusion is suggested by the occurrence, especially in the upper part of the bed, of abundant traces of various birds of prey, which appear to have been able to nest undisturbed on the rock and in its crevices.

It can not be doubted, therefore, that during the formation of the lemming bed an arctic climate reigned in north Switzerland. Toward the upper part of that bed, however, we find evidence to show that tundra conditions were gradually passing away. This is indicated by the fact that some of the tundra animals, so common in the lower part of the stratum, become scarcer, and at last cease to appear, while at the same time a few representatives of the subarctic steppe fauna enter upon the scene.

The next succeeding stratum (yellow relic bed) proved to be rich in