50 THE RISE OF MAN. 



60 feet above the bottom of the valley. In its earlier and uninjured 

 condition, this cavern opened upon a narrow plateau lying in front 

 of it, and from which the rocky wall descended almost perpendicu- 

 larly into the river. It could be reached, though with difficulty, 

 from above. The uneven floor was covered to a thickness of 4 or 

 5 feet with a deposit of mud, sparingly intermixed with rounded 

 fragments of chert. In the removing of this deposit the bones were 

 discovered. The skull was first noticed placed nearest to the en- 

 trance of the cavern; and further in, the other bones, lying in the 

 same horizontal plane. Of this I was assured in the most positive 

 terms by two laborers who were employed to clear out the grotto, 

 and who were questioned by me on the spot. At first no idea was 

 entertained of the bones being human; and it was not till several 

 weeks after their discovery that they were recognized as such by 

 me, and placed in security. But, as the importance of the discov- 

 ery was not at the time perceived, the laborers were very careless 

 in the collecting, and secured chiefly only the larger bores ; and to 

 this circumstance it may be attributed that fragments merely of the 

 probably perfect skeleton came into my possession." 



Dr. Fuhlrott condenses his conclusions in these three 

 statements : 



"First: That the extraordinary form of the skull was due to 

 a natural conformation hitherto not known to exist, even in the 

 most barbarous races. Second : That these remarkable hum m 

 remains belonged to a period antecedent to the time of the Celts 

 and Germans, and were in all probability derived from one of the 

 wild races of North western Europe, spoken of by Latin writers; 

 and which were encountered as autochthones by the German immi- 

 grants. And thirdly ; That it was beyond doubt that these human 

 relics were traceable to a period at which the latest animals of the 

 diluvium still existed; but that no proof in support of this assump- 

 tion, nor consequently of their so-termed fossil condition, was af- 

 forded by the circumstances under which the bones were discovered." 



Darwin mentions the subject in The Descent oj Man: 

 "The belief that there exists in man some close relation be- 

 tween the size of the brain and the development of the intellectual 

 faculties is supported by the comparison of the skulls of savage 

 and civilized races, of ancient and modern peoples, and by the 

 analogy of the whole vertebrate series. Dr. J. Bernard Davis has 

 proved, by many careful measurements, that the mean internal 



