380 



ETHNOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY. 



the E. antiquus in most of the oldest British 

 bone-caves, as at Kirkdale, Cefn, and else- 

 where ; 3, the B. Etruscus, the characteristic 

 species of the Val d'Arno deposits, and of the 

 forest-bed and superimposed blue clays of the 

 Norfolk coast, but nowhere as yet found in the 

 ossiferous caves of Britain. The B. ticho- 

 rhinus is a species characteristic of the drift, 

 and is throughout associated with the mam- 

 moth. 



Now, M. Laugel, in the bulletin of the Paris 

 Geological Society, has minutely described the 

 beds of St. Prest, near Chartres, as forming a 

 characteristically pliocene stratum. This view 

 the fossils E. meridionalis, R. leptorhinw, &c. 

 appear to prove correct. Lartet and Falconer 

 also agree in interpreting the stratum there, 

 containing these remains, as pliocene. 



In a geological point of view, the beds closely 

 resemble those of the Val d'Arno. They are 

 composed of sands of various colors, ferruginous 

 or white, pure or mixed with clay, with flint 

 pebbles from the chalk, and some boulders of 

 tertiary sandstone. The layers are in alternate 

 masses, irregularly repeated and variously in- 

 clined ; total thickness, 39 to 50 feet. These 

 are covered by a deposit of loess, and by the 

 more recent drift deposit (terrain de transport). 

 They overlie chalk, and are separated from it 

 by a bed of large flints. 



In the beds thus described, M. Desnoyers in 

 his memoir states, the workmen found fossil 

 remains, especially of the rhinoceros. These 

 bones show striae of various forms, depth, and 

 length, which could not be the result of break- 

 age or of drying, which cut the bone trans- 

 versely to its axis, and even passed above its 

 ridges, following the line of its contour. 

 " These stria), or traces of incisions, very clean 

 cuts, some of them very fine and very smooth, 

 the others much larger and more obtuse, as if 

 they had been produced by flat or notched 

 plates of flint, were accompanied by small, el- 

 liptical cuts or scratches, sharply characterized, 

 as if they had been produced by the contact of an 

 acute instrument." The cuts were partly cov- 

 ered with ferruginous dendrites and with sand, 

 and their edges were slightly bouldered. M. Des- 

 noyers considered these incisions as perfectly 

 analogous to those which have been frequently 

 recognized on the bones of the fossil cave mam- 

 malia in the drift (post-tertiary) deposits, in the 

 peat-beds, and even in far more recent deposits, 

 as in case of the Gaulish, Gallo-Roman, and 

 Germanic tombs. 



M. Desnoyers next proceeded to investigate 

 the collections of bones from the St, Prest beds, 

 many of them in private hands, which have been 

 excavated since 1849. Of more than 100 speci- 

 mens which he was enabled to meet with, all 

 presented the same characters. Assisted by M. 

 Lartet, he verified the cuts on bones of the fol- 

 lowing species of extinct animals: namely, E. 

 meridionalis; B. leptorhinu* ; Hippopotamus 

 major ; Census, many species ; Jfegaceros Car- 

 nutorum ; Bos, a large species; Bos, a small 



species. On the skull of an E. meridionalis in 

 the Paris Museum of Natural History, were 

 discovered traces of arrows which glanced from 

 the bone " the impression of the acute trian- 

 gular cavity left by the point of the arrow, and 

 the serrated marks left by its edge, are even 

 visible." These marks are very different from 

 those from the teeth of carnivora, and also from 

 marks of floating ice. The skulls of the large 

 deer all appear to have been broken near the 

 base of the antlers by a violent blow on the 

 frontal bone, as in some of the ruminant skulls 

 from the Danish deposits, described by Steen- 

 strup. Other traces of knife-action were visi- 

 ble on the skulls and antlers of deer. More 

 rarely, in the same bed, bones of ruminants are 

 found split open parallel with their axis, as if 

 to allow of extracting the marrow. Such ex- 

 amples are common also in the sepultures of 

 the stone, bronze, and later times. Some of the 

 bones presented also certain other fine stria?, 

 which the authors already named do not refer 

 to the agency of man. 



M. Desnoyers summed up in his paper the 

 facts and inferences in seven conclusions: 1. 

 The fossil bones of E. meridionalis and certain 

 other species, considered as characteristic of 

 the 'upper tertiary or pliocene beds, and dis- 

 covered in an undisturbed deposit of this bed, 

 bear marks as above described. 2. These 

 markings are perfectly analogous to those upon 

 the bones of more recent species, in caverns of 

 the drift, and later. 3. The same origin may 

 be affirmed of markings on the more ancient 

 and the more recent bones ; at present, he can 

 attribute them only to the action of man. 4. 

 Other finer marks have been due to the action 

 of pebbles, &c. 5. The section of St. Prest, 

 unanimously recognized as anterior to all the 

 quaternary deposits which contain E. primi- 

 genius, presents numerous bones of E. meridio- 

 nalis, &c., showing the two species of mark- 

 ing. " 6. From these facts, it appears possible 

 to conclude, with a great appearance of prob- 

 ability, until some more satisfactory explana- 

 tion may clear up this double phenomenon, 

 that man has lived on the French soil before 

 the great first glacial period, and at the samo 

 time as the E. meridionalis, and the other 

 pliocene species, characteristic of the Y;tl 

 d'Arno in Tuscany ; that he has been in con- 

 flict with these great animals anterior to the E. 

 primigenius and other mammalia of which th 3 

 remains have been found mixed with vestiges 

 or indications of man hi the drift or quaternary 

 deposits of the large valleys, and of cavern^. 

 V. Finally, the bed at St. Prest is at present, in 

 Europe, the most ancient example of the co- 

 existence of man and extinct mammalia in geo- 

 logical time." 



Mr. Blake, in concluding, thought that Jl. 

 Desnoyers had made out a fair prima facie case 

 in favor of the existence of man in the S' 

 Prest beds. And thus early he would appear, 

 therefore, to have justified that anticipation of 

 Lyell, in which the latter states his belief th:;t 



