88 Original Articles. [Jan. 
THE REPUTED FOSSIL MAN OF THE NEANDERTHAL. 
By Professor Wiru1am Kina, Queen’s University in Ireland, and 
Queen’s College, Galway. 
As it is my intention to confine myself to the consideration of the 
Neanderthal fossil with reference to its place in Nature, I must neces- 
sarily be brief in my remarks on the circumstances under which it 
occurred, and on its geological age. 
The fossil was found in 1857, embedded in mud in a cave or fissure 
intersecting the southern rocky side of the ravine or deep narrow 
valley, called the Neanderthal, situated near Hochdal between Dissel- 
dorf and Elberfeld. A small stream or rivulet, known as the Diissel, 
flows along a narrow channel about sixty feet below the lowest part of 
the fissure, and on one side of the valley. 
It has long been known that human bones, belonging to an extinct 
race, and occurring in stalagmite along with the remains of the mam- 
moth and other fossil animals, have been found in the limestone 
fissures or caverns of the lofty precipices which overhang the river 
Meuse, in Belgium, about seventy English miles south-west of the 
Neanderthal. 
Lyell’s late work, ‘The Antiquity of Man,’ contains a very lucid 
description of the Meuse caverns, and of the one under consideration. 
In both cases it is evident that we have examples of ancient swallow- 
holes, into which have been washed bones, mud, and gravel, when 
their openings existed in the bed of large and powerful rivers, It was 
doubtless by the incessant abrading action of such ancient streams, 
continued for countless ages, that the Neanderthal, and much of the 
broad valley of the Meuse, became scooped out. 
Few Geologists will dispute that the Meuse caverns are of the same 
age as the flint-implement gravels of the Somme, and that both belong 
to the latest division of the glacial or (as I have lately termed it) 
Clydian period.* If we accept the physical conditions of the Meuse 
caverns as demonstrative of their having been filled up in that remote 
age, we cannot but recognize in the corresponding conditions of the 
Neanderthal fissure evidences which claim for it an equally high 
antiquity, notwithstanding certain differences seemingly supporting 
the opposite conclusion. 
The want of stalagmite and the doubtful absence of remains of extinct 
animals in the Neanderthal fissure may be readily explained ; and as 
to the physical differences, the Diissel is certainly not to be compared 
with the Meuse for size and abrading power, but it must be admitted 
that a mere rivulet may take quite as much time to scoop out a “ravine” 
as a river to excavate a considerable portion of a broad valley. 
Having finished my preliminary remarks, I shall next proceed to 
notice the fossil itself. 
According to Dr. Fuhlrott, of Elberfeld, the skeleton was found 
* See ‘Synoptical Table of the Aqueous Rock-Systems,’ 5th edition. 
