CHAP. xi. NEAK LE PUY-EN-VELAY. 197 



an expert anatomist remarked to me that it would far exceed 

 the skill, whether of the peasant who owned the vineyard or 

 of the dealer above mentioned, to put together in their true 

 position all the thirty-eight bones of the hand and fingers, or 

 the sixteen of the wrist, without making any mistake, and 

 especially without mixing those of the right with the ho 

 mologous bones of the left hand, assuming that they had 

 brought bones, from some other spot, and then artificially 

 introduced them into a mixture of volcanic tuff and plaster 

 of Paris. 



Granting, however, that the high prices given for ( human 

 fossils ' at Le Puy may have led to the perpetration of some 

 frauds, it is still an interesting question to consider whether 

 the admission of the genuineness of a single fossil, such as 

 that now in the museum at Le Puy, would lead us to assign 

 a higher antiquity to the existence of man in France than is 

 deducible from many other facts explained in the last seven 

 chapters. In reference to this point, I may observe, that 

 although I was not able to fix with precision the exact bed in 

 the volcanic mountain from which the rock containing the 

 human bones was taken, M. Felix Eobert has, nevertheless, 

 after studying ( the volcanic alluviums ' of Denise, ascer 

 tained that, on the side of Cheyrac and the village of 

 Malouteyre, blocks of tufif frequently occur exactly like the 

 one in the museum. That tuff he considers a product of 

 the latest eruption of the volcano. In it have been found 

 the remains of Hycena spelcea and Hippopotamus major. 

 The eruptions of steam and gaseous matter which burst 

 forth from the crater of Denise broke through laminated 



o 



tertiary clays, small pieces of which, some of them scarcely 

 altered, others half converted into scoriaB, were cast out 

 in abundance, while other portions must have been in a 

 state of argillaceous mud. Showers of such materials would 

 be styled by the Neapolitans '. aqueous lava ' or ' lava d' aqua,' 



