in Caves in the South of France. 307 



covered in caverns containing remains of extinct animals, bones of 

 existing species of domestic and wild animals, and especially of 

 stags, sheep, wild boars, dogs, horses, and oxen, and also marine 

 shells analogous to those found at the present day on the neigh- 

 bouring coasts. This fact has been noticed in Quercy, and also in 

 several other provinces. We may conceive that these bodies may 

 have been placed under the tombs, and under the Celtic altars, 

 to commemorate the sacrifices offered to the GaUic divinities, 

 and more especially to Hesus, the Mars of the Gauls (Caesar 

 says, Marti, animalia capta immolant) ; or the religious and 

 funeral feasts; or, finally, that they have derived their origin 

 from a superstitious belief common to many nations, and which 

 enjoined the placing of provisions near the dead, to serve in a scr 

 cond life. Is it not very probable, that, in certain caverns which 

 may have been used, either at the same time, or successively^^ 

 as habitations, as places of sepulture, and, as in the case of the 

 Caves of Mithra and of the Druids, as religious retreats, the 

 bones of the more modern animals, and the marine shells which 

 have been found with the human bones and have been super- 

 added to the ancient fluviatile ossiferous mud, may have had an 

 historical rather than a geological origin ? 



It is in this new sort of repository of dolmen and tumuli, a 

 repository, so to speak, of an historical and a monumental charac- 

 ter, that we ought to search, with circumspection it is true, but 

 still with more perfect security of the authenticity than in the 

 caves, for the remains of certain contemporaneous animals of the 

 more ancient nations of Gaul. We know that the aurochs, the 

 buffalo or savage bull, and certain species of deer, which lived 

 then in the great forests of Gaul and Germany that have gra- 

 dually been cleared away, have only been insensibly expelled by 

 the progress of cultivation and civilization ; for the urus existed 

 in the Vosges in the time of the early kings of France in the se- 

 venth century. The Gauls, who were great hunters, regarded 

 as trophies the skins of these animals, and especially those of the 

 buffalo and the deer, which they offered to Cerunnos, their deity 

 of the chase, or fixed to the gates of their dwellings along with 

 the skulls of their enemies. The horns of the urus were also 

 . used as cups on festive occasions. 



, There is then some chance of finding such objects under 

 Druidical stones or tombs ; under those, at least, which existed 



