70 PRESENT STATE OF BELGIAN CAVES. CHAP. iv. 



who accompanied me to the cavern, where we engaged some 

 workmen to break through the crust of stalagmite, so that 

 we could search for bones in the undisturbed earth beneath. 

 Bones and teeth of the cave-bear were soon found, and 

 several other extinct quadrupeds which Schmerling has enu 

 merated. My companion, continuing the work perseveringly 

 for weeks after my departure, succeeded at length in ex 

 tracting from the same deposit, at the depth of two feet 

 below the crust of stalagmite, three fragments of a human 

 skull, and two perfect lower jaws with teeth, all associated in 

 such a manner with the bones of bears, large pachyderms, 

 and ruminants, and so precisely resembling these in colour 

 and state of preservation, as to leave no doubt in his mind 

 that man was contemporary with the extinct animals. Pro 

 fessor Malaise has given figures of the human remains in the 

 bulletin of the royal academy of Belgium for I860.* 



The rock in which the Liege caverns occur belongs gene 

 rally to the carboniferous or mountain limestone, in some 

 few cases only to the older Devonian formation. Whenever 

 the work of destruction has not gone too far, magnificent 

 sections, sometimes 200 and 300 feet in height, are exposed 

 to view. They confirm Schmerling's doctrine, that most of 

 the materials, organic and inorganic, now filling the caverns, 

 have been washed into them through narrow vertical or 

 oblique fissures, the upper extremities of which are choked 

 up with soil and gravel, and would scarcely ever be discover 

 able at the surface, especially in so wooded a country. Among 

 the sections obtained by quarrying, one of the finest which I 

 saw was in the beautiful valley of Fond du Foret, above 

 Chaudefontaine, not far from the village of Magnee, where 

 one of the rents communicating with the surface has been 

 filled up to the brim with rounded and half-rounded stones, 



* Tom. x. p. 546. 



