126 ENTIRE SKELETON OF RHINOCEROS. CHAP. vin. 



Bos primigenius. 



Cervus somonensis Cuvier. 



C. Tarandus prisons Cuvier. 



Felis spelcea. 



Hycena spelcea. 



The ZTrsus spelceus has also been mentioned by some 

 writers ; but M. Lartet says he has sought in vain for it 

 among the osteological treasures sent from Abbeville to Cuvier 

 at Paris, and in other collections. The same palaeontologist, 

 after a close scrutiny of the bones sent formerly to the Paris 

 Museum from the valley of the Somme, observed that some 

 of them bore the evident marks of an instrument, agreeing 

 well with incisions such as a rude flint-saw would produce. 

 Among other bones mentioned as having been thus artificially 

 cut, are those of a Rhinoceros tichorhinus, and the antlers of 

 Cervus somonensis.* 



The evidence obtained by naturalists that some of the 

 extinct mammalia of Menchecourt really lived and died in 

 this part of France, at the time of the embedding of the flint 

 tools in fluviatile strata, is most satisfactory ; and not the less 

 so for having been put on record long before any suspicion 

 was entertained that works of art would ever be detected 

 in the same beds. Thus M. Baillon, writing in 1834 to 

 M. Ravin, says, ( They begin to meet with fossil bones at 

 the depth of ten or twelve feet in the Menchecourt sand-pits, 

 but they find a much greater quantity at the depth of eighteen 

 and twenty feet. Some of them were evidently broken before 

 they were embedded, others are rounded, having, without 

 doubt, been rolled by running water. It is at the bottom of 

 the sand-pits that the most entire bones occur. Here they 

 lie without having undergone fracture or friction, and seem 

 to have been articulated together at the time when they 

 were covered up. I found in one place a whole hind limb 

 * Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, London, vol. xvi. p. 471. 



