60 DISCOVERIES OF MM. TOURNAL AND CHRISTOL. CHAP. iv. 



the same mud and breccia cemented by stalagmite in which 

 land-shells of living species were embedded, and the bones 

 of mammalia, some of extinct, others of recent species. The 

 human bones were declared by his fellow-labourer, M. Marcel 

 de Serres, to be in the same chemical condition as those of 

 the accompanying quadrupeds.* 



Speaking of these fossils of the Bize cavern five years 

 later, M. Tournal observed, that they could not be referred, 

 as some suggested, to a ' diluvial catastrophe,' for they 

 evidently had not been washed in suddenly by a transient 

 flood, but must have been introduced gradually, together 

 with the enveloping mud and pebbles, at successive periods. f 



M. Christol, who was engaged at the same time in 

 similar researches in another part of Languedoc, published an 

 account of them a year later, in which he described some 

 human bones, as occurring in the cavern of Pondres, near 

 Nismes, in the same mud with the bones of an extinct hyaena 

 and rhinoceros. :f The cavern was in this instance filled up 

 to the roof with mud and gravel, in which fragments of two 

 kinds of pottery were detected, the lowest and rudest near 

 the bottom of the cave, below the level of the extinct mam 

 malia. 



It has never been questioned that the hysena and rhinoceros 

 found by M. Christol were of extinct species ; but whether 

 the animals enumerated by M. Tournal might not all of them 

 be referred to quadrupeds which are known to have been 

 living in Europe in the historical period seems doubtful. 

 They were said to consist of a stag, an antelope, and a goat, 

 all named by M. Marcel de Serres as new; but the majority 

 of paleontologists do not agree with this opinion. Still it is 

 true, as M. Lartet remarks, that the fauna of the cavern of 



* Annales des Sciences Naturelles, J Christol, Notice surles Ossements 



torn. xv. p. 348 : 1 828. humains des Cavernes du Gard. Mont- 



f Annales de Chimie et de Phy- pellier, 1829. 

 sique, p. 161 : 1833. 



