CHAP. x. POST-PLIOCENE BURIAL-PLACE, SOUTH OF FRANCE. 181 



the Somme, Thames, or Severn, making timely retreat to the 

 south before the snow and ice set in. 



Burial-place at A urignac, in the South of France, of 

 Post-pliocene Date. 



I have alluded in the beginning of the fourth chapter (p. 58) 

 to a custom prevalent among rude nations of consigning to the 

 tomb works of art, once the property of the dead or objects 

 of their affection, and even of storing up, in many cases, 

 animal food destined for the manes of the defunct in a future 

 life. I also cited M. Desnoyers' comments on the absence 

 among the bones of wild and domestic animals found in old 

 Gaulish tombs of all intermixture of extinct species of qua 

 drupeds, as proving that the oldest sepulchral monuments 

 then known in France (1845) had no claims to high antiquity 

 founded on palseontological data. 



M. Lartet, however, has recently published a circumstantial 

 account of what seems clearly to have been a sepulchral vault 

 of the post-pliocene period, near Aurignac, not far from the 

 foot of the Pyrenees. I have had the advantage of inspect 

 ing the fossil bones and works of art obtained by him from 

 that grotto, and of conversing and corresponding with him 

 on the subject, and can see no grounds for doubting the sound 

 ness of his conclusions.* 



The town of Aurignac is situated in the department of the 

 Haute Graronne, near a spur of the Pyrenees ; adjoining it is 

 the small flat-topped hill of Fajoles, about sixty feet above 

 the brook called Eodes, which flows at its foot on one side. 

 It consists of nummulitic limestone, presenting a steep escarp 

 ment towards the north-west, on which side in the face of the 



* See Lartet, Annales des Mines, in Natural History Eeview, London, 

 Zoologie, torn. xv. p. 177, translated January 1862. 



