THE BRITISH LION. 77 



able to master the hippopotamus, the lion, the slender-nosed rhinoceros, 

 or the straight- tusked elephant, and to carry their bones to their den, 

 where they were found by Dr. Buckland. The hyenas also inhabiting 

 " the Dukeries " dragged back to the dens fragments of lion. Here, 

 too, our researches at Creswell revealed the presence of man. In the 

 lower deposits in the caves were the characteristic implements of the 

 river-drift hunter, while in the upper were the more highly finished 

 stone weapons of the cave-man, along with articles made of bone and 

 antler, such as a needle, and the earliest trace of artistic design in the 

 figure of a horse incised on a polished fragment of bone. Here the 

 wild animals were for the most part of the same species as those living 

 in the area of London, and the same remark holds good of those found 

 in the hyena-dens in the vale of Clwyd or on the banks of the Wye. 

 The headquarters, however, of the lion in Britain were the Mendip 

 Hills in Somersetshire, which overlooked the fertile tract which then 

 extended from their foot under the present estuary of the Severn, and 

 joined the great prairie sweeping up the English Channel, and far to 

 the west of Ireland, and as far south as the mouth of the Garonne. 

 Over this vast feeding-ground the lions followed the migrating her- 

 bivores, and Banwell, Bleadon, and Weston-suner-Mare were their 

 favorite haunts. They lay in wait in the passes of Cheddar and Bur- 

 rington, and from time to time were surprised and overmastered by 

 the hyaenas on the banks of the Axe as it flowed through the pict- 

 uresque ravine of Wookey. 



On the Continent the lion ranged over France, Belgium, and Ger- 

 many along with the above-described animals, and having the river- 

 drift man first of all, and then the cave-man for its rivals. Evidence 

 of this rivalry we have in a remarkable necklace found in the cave of 

 Duruthy, in the district of the Adour in the western Pyrenees, con- 

 sisting of forty canine teeth of bear and three of lion, adorned with 

 incised figures a harpoon, glove, fish, or seal. It is a magnificent 

 trophy of the chase, buried along with the hunter in the floor of his 

 dwelling, which proves that human art was more than a master for 

 the claws and teeth of the most formidable beasts of prey the lion 

 and the cave-bear then living in the southwest of France. The 

 broken and burned bones on the floor point to the fact that reindeer, 

 horses, bisons, and stags were then abundant in the neighborhood. 



The fossil remains of the lion are found also in Italy along with 

 the remains of living and extinct animals, such as the stag, Irish elk, 

 and mammoth in strata of the Pleistocene age. Nor is the range 

 of the lion confined merely to Europe at this time. An accumulation 

 of fossil remains was discovered many years ago in the United States, 

 in the valley of the Ohio, a few miles southwest of Cincinnati, in Boone 

 County, Kentucky, so great that it is known as Big Bone Lick. The 

 animals to which they belonged had been attracted to the morass in 

 which they perished by a deposit of salt, and present the same asso- 



