100 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF [1894. 



outer talus, our exaraiuation of the remaining small fringes of 

 debris brought us to the first question : 



Were the animal and human remains contemporaneous? 



If they were not, no matter what the bison, horse, chinchilla and 

 reindeer meant in the cave, their bones told us little of the date of 

 Man's visit, and their discovery formed no interesting link between 

 archaeology and paleontology. Our trench 40 feet in from the en- 

 trance, 3 leet, 8 inches wide, and 22 feet, 3 inches long, dug for possible 

 hidden layers and bottom, at right angles across the cave floor showed 

 a continuous homogeneous bed of exquisitely fine clay, deposited 

 in thin laminjc rarely sprinkled with sand pockets and underlaid 

 with a film of sand resting on an uneven limestone floor at 5 feet, 

 11 inches; 10 feet, 7 inches; 11 feet, 6 inches and 14 feet, 1 inch. 



As no sign of life, no interrupting layer from top to bottom 

 wasapparent, it seemed that it could be relieved of all connection with 

 Mr. Paret's discoveries. The animal remains and human refuse 

 must have all belonged to the debris and cave earth above it, and it 

 only remained to be asked before we were done with this all import- 

 ant test of stratification whether Mr. Paret's relic- bearing upper de- 

 posit of roof slivers, rotten leaves, human relics, bones, charcoal and 

 ashes, gathered dust and inroUed talus consisted of one layer homo- 

 geneous throughout, telling of one uninterrupted time of occupation, 

 or of several layers diff'ering in character, separated by interplaced 

 bands proving time intervals between the visits of Man and beast. 

 The trouble was that nearly all this cave floor material had been dug 

 away and all we had to guide us was what was left of it, its outer end 

 so to speak, in the talus. But when we cut into this talus just out- 

 side the entrance we did what we would have done had we explored 

 the cave at the start, and when we found a thin layer of human occu- 

 pancy in it 1 foot thick and 1 2 to 2 feet below its surface we inferred 

 that this human layer was but a continuation of the lost human layer 

 inside the cave. Yet as the conditions for soil formation outside 

 probably differed from those inside the cave, and as we only penetra- 

 ted 10 to 12 feet into the outer talus without reaching the clay or its 

 efpiivalent that should have been below it, there was a chance that 

 our talus wtis not a fair end slice of the cave, and that there might 

 have been several human layers inside against the single one in the 

 talus outside. 



Too much critical ground had been lost and we had to be satisfied 



