186 THE RHINOCEROS TICHORINUS EATEN BY MAN. CHAP. x. 



of them being also burnt. The spongy parts/ moreover, 

 were wanting, having been eaten off and gnawed after they 

 were broken, the work, according to M. Lartet, of hyaenas, 

 the bones and coprolites of which were plentifully mixed with 

 the cinders, and dispersed through the overlying soil d. These 

 beasts of prey are supposed to have prowled about the spot 

 and fed on such relics of the funeral feasts as remained after 

 the retreat of the human visitors, or during the intervals 

 between successive funeral ceremonies which accompanied 

 the interment of the corpses within the sepulchre. Many of 

 the bones were also streaked, as if the flesh had been scraped 

 off by a flint instrument. 



Among the various proofs that the bones were fresh when 

 brought to the spot, it is remarked that those of the herbivora 

 not only bore the marks of having had the marrow extracted 

 and having afterwards been gnawed and in part devoured as if 

 by carnivorous beasts, but that they had also been acted upon 

 by fire (and this was especially noticed in one case of a 

 cave-bear's bone), in such a manner as to show that they 

 retained in them at the time all their animal matter. 



Among other quadrupeds which appear to have been eaten 

 at the funeral feasts, and of which the bones occurred among 

 the ashes, were those of a young Rhinoceros tichorhinus, the 

 bones of which had been split open for the extraction of the 

 marrow, and gnawed by a beast of prey at both extremities. 



Outside of the great slab of stone forming the door, 

 not one human bone occurred ; inside of it there were found, 

 mixed with loose soil, the remains of as many as seventeen 

 human individuals, besides some works of art and bones of 

 animals. We know nothing of the arrangement of these 

 bones when they were first broken into. M. Lartet infers, 

 from the small height and dimensions of the vault, that the 

 bodies were bent down upon themselves in a squatting atti 

 tude, a posture known to have been adopted in most of the 

 sepulchres of primitive times ; and he has so represented them 



