in Caves in the South of France. 809 



and sometimes much more recent; and not more anterior to the 

 last grand catastrophes of the globe than Druidical monumentSw 

 The author does not see sufficient proofs for believing that, since 

 the establishment of the human race in Gaul, other species of 

 the larger mammalia than those mentioned in history have be- 

 come extinct. 



The question of the human bones of caverns presents three 

 chief }X)ints of view. 



Either, These bones were antediluvian, like those of the extinct 

 species of mammiferous animals with which they are found as- 

 sociated (the bear, the hyena, the rhinoceros. Sec.) ; and, in that 

 case, the existence of the human race must, in our country, have 

 preceded those last upraisings of mountains which have scat- 

 tered the diluvian gravel, and the great changes of temperature 

 which seem to have contributed to the destruction of these animals: 



Or, These large species of animals can have been destroyed 

 only by gradual and natural causes, operating in historical times, 

 or at least since the invention of arts, and the establishment of 

 the human race in the southern parts of France ; and, admitting 

 this view of the question, the Gauls must have hunted the rhi- 

 noceros and hyena, as well as the urus, the elk, and the wild 

 boar : 



Or, thirdly and lastly. The union, on the same subterranean 

 soils, of these different bodies, was merely the result of various 

 accidental causes, which were not simultaneous, and were dis- 

 tinct from the general phenomena of bone-caverns. 



Many geologists have declared decidedly for the two first opi- 

 nions, and for the contemporaneous existence of man and a large 

 number of the species of animals which have totally disappeared. 

 The opinion advocated by M. Desnoyers is directly the contrary, 

 and is that which we have mentioned third in order. This opi- 

 nion, which appears to have become that of the largest number 

 of geologists, does not in any degree diminish the interest of 

 the discoveries from which MM. Marcel de Serres, Toumal, de 

 Christol, Farines, &c. have drawn opposite conclusions, and have 

 reproduced the idea of the existence of fossil remains of man, a 

 view contradicted by the phenomena of all other deposits. It is 

 possible, that, when they shall have regarded the question in a 

 mixed geological and historical point of view, it may seem to 



