1866. | of the Two earliest known Races of Men. 337 
lected together by the current, as at Ilford in Essex. The Hippo- 
potamus disputed with the Beaver and the Otter the sovereignty of 
the rivers. In the forests dwelt two species of extinct Rhinoceros, 
the Bison and the Urus, the Irish Elk and the Horse, and afforded 
food for the Wolves, the gigantic Cave-Lion and Cave-Bear, the 
Cave-Hyena and the Glutton. 
On such a scene as this man appears for the first time armed 
with the rudest weapons of flint, chert, and bone. Exposed like the 
beasts to the vicissitudes of a climate far more severe than that now 
obtaining in the same area, living like the Hyzenas in caves wherever 
he could find them, sheltered from the cold where there were no 
caves by a rude hut, probably little better than the lair of a wild 
beast, preying on the wild animals around him, he fought for dear 
life itself with the great carnivora. Separated from the beasts by 
the possession of reason, he had already mastered the use of fire, and 
armed with the bow, the spear, and the sling, made good his foot- 
hold in the Fauna of Western Europe. 
The contents of the cave of Aurignac, examined by M. Lartet 
in 1860, inclined him to the belief that the ancient folk who used 
the implements found both within and outside the cave were con- 
temporary with the Mammoth and woolly Rhinoceros, that the 
human skeletons found were interred at a time when the extinct 
Pleistocene mammalia lived in France, and that some of the animals, 
and especially a young Rhinoceros, had been eaten at the funeral 
feast.* If, indeed—to quote the classic words of Sir Charles Lyell 
—‘“the fossil memorials have been correctly interpreted—if we have 
here before us at the northern base of the Pyrenees a sepulchral 
vault with skeletons of human beings consigned by friends and rela- 
tives to their last resting-place—if we have also at the portal of the 
tomb the relics of funeral feasts, and within it indications of viands 
destined for the use of the departed on their way to a land of spirits ; 
while among the funeral gifts are weapons wherewith in other fields 
to chase the gigantic deer, the cave-lon, the cave-bear, and the 
woolly rhinoceros—we have at last succeeded in tracing back the 
sacred rites of burial, and more interesting still, a belief in a future 
state, to times long anterior to history and tradition.” When, 
however, it is considered that the cave was discovered eight years 
before it was scientifically examined, and that the human skeletons 
found therein by the discoverer, a workman named Bonnemaison, 
were removed and buried in the cemetery of Aurignac, where they 
cannot now be found, the contents of the cave being thus disturbed, 
the inference that the skeletons are of the same age as the extinct 
mammals, and of the flint and bone implements, seems to be faulty. 
The gisement of the skeletons rests upon the hearsay evidence of 
what occurred eight years previously ; no person interested in the 
* « Ann. des Mines, Zoologie, t. xv., p. 177. 
+ ‘Antiquity of Man,’ pp, 192-3. Virst edit., 1868. 
