attracted considerable attention among scientific men; but it maintained that man was not contemporary with the extinct species. The discoveries made in 1842 in Kent's Cavern, near Torquay, Devonshire, by Mr. Godwin Austen, clearly disproved these conclusions, but without convincing geologists or palæontologists.

The year 1858 marks the beginning of an important era. A reaction against the too absolute opinions of Dr. Buckland set in in England, and this opposition originated. in the Royal Society. Several of its most eminent members, among others Falconer and Prestwich, were commissioned by the Royal Society to explore with the greatest care the recently discovered cave of Brixham (Devonshire), and to draw up a report on the subject. Among a quantity of carved flints and bones of extinct species, an entire left hind leg of Ursus spelaus was found lying above the incrustation of stalagmite which covered the bones of other extinct species and the carved flints. The bear had therefore lived after the manufacture of these flint knives, consequently after the men who fashioned them. These men were therefore more ancient than the cave bear.

Such were the conclusions of the Royal Society, and they were shortly afterwards confirmed by discoveries. similar to those made at Brixham, notably by those of the cave of Long Hole (Glamorganshire), where Colonel Wood, in 1861, found imbedded in the same stratum flint tools of the type of those of Amiens, together with bones of the Rhinoceros hæmitachus, which is of yet earlier date than the tichorhinus.

From all these facts we gather that the theory of the co-existence of man and extinct species is no new one, and that proofs in support of it are not wanting; but it has only been supported by incontestable evidence, at least as far as France is concerned, since the publication of the valuable works of M. Lartet on the bone caves of Périgord and upon the burial cave of Aurignac (Haute Garonne). It may even be said that the last remarkable monograph of this savant has become the starting point of all the

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researches which have since been undertaken in France, in England, in Belgium, in Italy, and in Spain. I am far from wishing to underrate the value and importance of the work which has been done in the bone caves of neighbouring countries; but the caves of France, and especially those of southern France and of Périgord, have supplied the most convincing proofs in support of this theory of synchronism, which acquires every day a greater number of partisans. This is an important fact, which Lyell himself seems to have somewhat forgotten, but M. d'Archiac has taken care to claim the recognition of its great importance.

II. DESCRIPTION OF THE BONE CAVES.

The name of bone caves is given to the more or less extensive natural cavities which occur in the sedimentary rocks of almost every epoch, but especially in those of the cretaceous beds of the Jurassic Mountains, and which contain a variable number of bones of men or of animals, intermixed, as a rule, with articles of human workmanship. These cavities, usually complex, and very irregular in form, communicate with each other, sometimes by wide galleries, sometimes by winding passages, so narrow and so low that they can only be traversed on hands and knees. Varying considerably in length and height, they extend sometimes a distance of some miles in the interior of the strata in which they are concealed. Situated for the most part at a much higher level than existing watercourses, they communicate with the outer air by openings in the side of the mountain, by holes in the vaulted roof, or by a species of natural wells, into which in many cases those torrents fell which formerly bore along in their current the various matters now found in the caves. Hence come the evident marks of erosion which are almost always to be observed on their walls.1

As they hollowed out the valleys and gradually deepened their beds, the great rivers of the quaternary

1 The cave of Duruthy, recently described by M. Louis Lartet, is hollowed in a bed of nummulitic chalk.

epoch, often swollen by heavy rains, bore away the rocks which closed the entrance of the caverns, and deposited within them the ossiferous sediment and the waterworn stones which are found there; we must therefore admit, with M. Ed. Dupont, first, that the openings of the caverns found on the slopes of the valleys took place at a date corresponding to their greater or less height above the present level of the river; secondly, that the fluviatile deposits with which they are partly filled are the more ancient, the higher they are raised above this same level.

These deposits usually consist of a reddish, or sometimes black sediment of sand or mud, containing bones of different kinds intermixed with sand, gravel, and waterworn pebbles, or with angular fragments broken off from the roof or walls of the cavity. The ossiferous sediment is usually disposed in layers; sometimes it forms a hard crust, intermixed with fragments of bone imbedded firmly in its mass, and it is then termed a bone breccia. Breccia of this nature nearly always occupy the lower part of the caverns and fill up their fissures.

A stalagmitic crust of varying thickness covers in many cases the sediment and the remains imbedded in it. Sometimes even the successive ossiferous deposits are separated from each other by as many layers of stalagmite as there are layers of sediment. Other calcareous incrustations, known as stalactites and stalagmites, presenting the most varied and whimsical forms, often cover the floor, the walls, and the roof of the caverns, and give them that fantastic appearance which caused them formerly to be considered as the abode of fairies.

Occurring, as we have said, in the most various beds (chalk of the transition period, jurassic, cretaceous, nummulitic, and upper marine tertiary rocks), and in every country

In certain Brazilian caves Lund has counted seven layers of ossiferous sediment, separated by as many layers of stalagmite; a certain proof that the bones therein contained were deposited at different and successive epochs. The same phenomenon was observed in a gallery of the cave of Brixham, near Torquay, and in certain caverns of France and Belgium. This clearly shows that the waters were introduced and withdrawn several times, and in the intervals the stalagmite was deposited.

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on the earth, the bone caves present nearly everywhere the same general characters, but not the same contents. Thus while the most ancient caverns of the European continent contain in more or less abundance the bones of the Ursus spelaus, the Hyana spelaa, the Elephas primigenius, the Rhinoceros tichorhinus, the Cervus tarandus, the Megaceros hibernicus, the Bison europæus or aurochs, &c., those of America contain, besides the monkeys peculiar to that continent, the remains of animals which recall, but in colossal proportions, certain species of edentata still living in the country. Such are the megatherium, the mylodon, the megalonyx, the glyptodon, &c.

Finally, in Australia, where the only indigenous mammals belong exclusively to the family of marsupials or pouched animals, we find marsupials of gigantic size in the bone caves (Diprotodon australis, Macropus atlas, Phascolomys gigas, &c.).

The condition of the bones imbedded in the sediment of the caves shows that they have undergone considerable changes in their chemical composition. They have generally lost the greater part of their organic matter. They are fragile, resonant, more or less friable, cracked, and stick to the tongue when they are touched with it. Many of them are irregularly broken across, or else intentionally split lengthways. As a rule, they are scattered without any order in the sediment of the caves, but sometimes they have retained their natural positions. This was the case with a femur, tibia, fibula, patella, and an astragalus of Ursus spelæus, found by Dr. Falconer in the cave of Brixham. The skeletons of the great mammalia (elephant, horse, ox, &c.) are very rarely found entire' in the ossiferous grottoes, while all the pieces of the skeleton of the reindeer and of animals of small or middling size are very often, indeed nearly always, to be found. This is owing to the fact that the troglodyte savages of our lands carried

1 Among the rare examples of which we are speaking, we may instance the al ost entire skeleton of a rhinoceros found in the ossiferous sediment of Dream Cave, in Derbyshire, an evident proof that when introduced into this subterranean cavern, it was still clothed with flesh, or at least that the bones were still connected by ligaments.

away entire to their subterraneous dwellings those victims of the chase whose weight was not too great, while they cut up on the hunting ground the larger booty, contenting themselves with bearing away the head and limbs to eat in the cavern.

So many different opinions have been put forward with respect to the means by which the bone caves were filled, that it appears impossible to reconcile them with each other. The supposition that all bone caves have been filled by watercourses in flood, which at different times have borne thither, in company with gravel, mud, and pebbles, the immense quantity of bones which they encountered on the surface of the soil, is, we think, a too absolute assertion, and one which observation has shown to be false. For often even the youngest and most fragile bones present no trace of a violent or prolonged removal; their sharpest edges, their most acute angles, are intact, which would certainly not be the case had they been carried any distance by the current.

Now this is precisely what has been observed in those caverns which contain only the remains of Ursus spelœus. We are therefore justified in ascribing the accumulation of these remains to the prolonged habitation of the bears in these caves, until the moment when they were overwhelmed by the waters, diluvian or other, and buried then * and there in the sediment which they bore along with them. Again, when we find in company with these bones of bears, and imbedded in the same sediment, those of herbivorous animals intermixed with those of the great Felida or of Hyæna spelaa, we ought to admit with the author of Reliquiæ Diluvianæ,' that these great carnivora may have carried their prey into these subterranean hollows, to devour it there at their leisure. The marks of the teeth of the carnivora still to be seen on the bones of the herbivora crushed by their powerful jaws; the presence of their excrement (coprolithes) in the very place of deposit; the heaps formed by these ejecta, still placed one over the other, and as if articulated together; are so many proofs which testify against the theory which assigns the