CHAP. v. NEANDERTHAL SKELETON. 77 



surface of the country. Through this passage the loam, 

 and possibly the human body to which the bones belonged, 

 may have been washed into the cave below. The loam, 

 which covered the uneven bottom of the cave, was sparingly 

 mixed with rounded fragments of chert, and was very similar 

 in composition to that covering the general surface of that 

 region. 



There was no crust of stalagmite overlying the mud in 

 which the human skeleton was found, and no bones of other 

 animals in the mud with the skeleton ; but just before our 

 visit in 1860 the tusk of a bear had been met with in some 

 mud in a lateral embranchment of the cave, in a situation 

 precisely similar to 6, fig. 1, and on a level corresponding 

 with that of the human skeleton. This tusk, shown us by 

 the proprietor of the cave, was two and a half inches long and 

 quite perfect ; but whether it was referable to a recent or 

 extinct species of bear, I could not determine. 



From a printed letter of Dr. Fuhlrott we learn that on 

 removing the loam, which was five feet thick, from the cave, 

 the human skull was first noticed near the entrance, and, 

 further in, the other bones lying in the same horizontal 

 plane. It is supposed that the skeleton was complete, but 

 the workmen, ignorant of its value, scattered and lost most 

 of the bones, preserving only the larger ones.* 



The cranium, which Dr. Fuhlrott showed me, was covered 

 both on its outer and inner surface, and especially on the 

 latter, with a profusion of dendritical crystallisations, and 

 some other bones of the skeleton were ornamented in the 

 same way. These markings, as Dr. Hermann von Meyer 

 observes, afford no sure criterion of antiquity, for they have 

 been observed on Eoman bones. Nevertheless, they are 

 more common in bones that have been long embedded in 



* Letter to Professor Schaaffhausen, cited Natural History Keview, No. 2, 

 p. 156. 



