66 ORIGINAL ARTICLES.. 



I have omitted to enumerate in the list of Herbivora two half- 

 jaws of a Field Mouse (Campagnol), and the calcaneum of a Hare, 

 which may hare been accidentally introduced independently of 

 human agency. 



It is well known that an aversion to the flesh of the Hare, is 

 still more general than that against pork. The Hare was regarded 

 as impure by several of the nations of antiquity. Caesar (Z)e Bell. 

 Gallic, lib. V. c. 12) states that among the inhabitants of Britain the 

 use of its flesh as food was forbidden.* The Laplanders at the 

 present day always regard it with horror, and among several 

 nations of our part of Europe the flesh of the Hare is still despised. 

 The remains of the Hare and Eabbit are very abundant in the ossi- 

 ferous breccias and in many of the caves in the Pyrenees ; but I 

 have met with no traces of their existence in the lower grotto of 

 Massat, nor have their remains been noticed in other caverns which 

 appear to have been inhabited exclusively by man. The bones of 

 the Hare are not mentioned among those of the numerous animals 

 recognized in the Danish Kitchen-middens,t nor have any been 

 found below the lacustrine habitations of Switzerland belonging to 

 the various ages of Stone, Bronze, and Iron. 



With respect to the Horse, it appears from the broken and 

 comminuted state of his bones, resembling that in which those 

 of the ruminants are found, that his flesh entered largely into the 

 food of the aborigines of Aurignac. Nevertheless, at Massat, a 

 station a little less ancient, the bones of the Horse are entirely ab- 

 sent, Avhilst in the cavern of Bise, which was used as a habitation 

 by man at a period when the iieindeer still lived in the south of 

 Trance, the broken bones of the Horse were, according to M. Tournal, 

 equally abundant with those of the rimiinants. The Sarmatians, 

 says an ancient historian, Avere distinguished from other nations, 

 and in particular from the Celts, by their taste and predilection for 

 the blood and flesh of the Horse, and for Mare's milk. The Horse 

 is wanting in the Stone age in Switzerland and in Denmark. Never- 

 theless, in Switzerland, in the 10th century of oiu' era, horse-flesh 

 was served at the table of the monks of St. Gall, at a period, when 

 amongst other European nations its use as food was forbidden under 

 pain of excommunication. 



flesh of the Wild Boai- or of the Pig. Their flesh, it is well known, was excluded 

 from the diet of the Egyptians and of the Jews, who, nevertheless, had domesti- 

 cated the species. The Scythians, according to Herodotus, abstained fi-om the flesh 

 of the Hog, and the Gallo-Greeks held it in equal aversion. How can the fact be 

 explained, then, that the ancient Gauls, who had affinities with both those people, 

 used pork as a considerable part of their food? Observations made in the ancient 

 stations of the aborigines of Denmark, and beneath the lacustrine habitations of 

 the Stone period in Switzerland, have shown that those primitive races also fed 

 largely upon the flesh of the Wild Boar. 



[• Though he states, nevertheless, that the Britons bred the Hare, Fowl, and 

 Goose, though forbidden to use them as food, " animi, voluptatisquo causa."] 



[f Vid. Nat. Hist. Rev. 1861, p. 489.] 



