198 VOLCANIC ACTION IN CENTRAL FRANCE. CHAP. XT. 



and we may well suppose that some human individuals, 

 if any existed, would, together with wild animals, be occa 

 sionally overwhelmed in these tuffs. From near the place 

 on the mountain whence the block with human bones now 

 in the museum is said to have come, a stream of lava, well 

 marked by its tabular structure, flowed down the flanks of 

 the hill, within a few feet of the alluvial plain of the Borne, 

 a small tributary of the Loire, on the opposite bank of which 

 stands the town of Le Puy. Its continuous extension to so 

 low a level clearly shows that the valley had already been 

 deepened to within a few feet of its present depth at the time 

 of the flowing of the lava. 



We know that the alluvium of the same district, having a 

 similar relation to the present geographical outline of the 

 valleys, is of post-pliocene date, for it contains around Le Puy 

 the bones of Elephas primigenius and Rhinoceros ticho- 

 rhinus ; and this affords us a palseontological test of the age of 

 the human skeleton of Denise, if the latter be assumed to be 

 coeval with the lava stream above referred to. 



It is important to dwell on this point, because some geolo 

 gists have felt disinclined to believe in the genuineness of 

 the ' fossil man of Denise,' on the ground that, if conceded, 

 it would imply that the human race was contemporary with 

 an older fauna, or that of the Elephas meridionalis. Such a 

 fauna is found fossil in another layer of tuff covering the slope 

 of Denise, opposite to that where the museum specimen was 

 exhumed. The quadrupeds obtained from that more ancient 

 tuff comprise Elephas meridionalis, Hippopotamus major, 

 Rhinoceros megarhinus, Antilope torticornis, Hycena brevi- 

 rostris, and twelve others of the genera horse, ox, stag, goat, 

 tiger, &c., all supposed to be of extinct species. This tuff, 

 found between Malouteyre and Polignac, M. Robert regards 

 as the product of a much older eruption, and referable to the 

 neighbouring Montague de St. Anne, a volcano in a much 



