CBAP. XVI. HUMAN REMAINS NEAR MAESTRICHT. 33<J 



skeletons) of elephants obtained during these diggings, was 

 extraordinary. Not a few of them are still preserved in the 

 museums of Maestricht and Leyden, together with some 

 horns of deer, bones of the ox-tribe and other mammalia, 

 and a human lower jaw, with teeth. According to Professor 

 Crahay, who published an account of it at the time, this jaw, 

 which is now preserved at Leyden, was found at the depth of 

 nineteen feet from the surface, where the loess joins the under 

 lying gravel, in a stratum of sandy loam resting on gravel, 

 and overlaid by some pebbly and sandy beds. The stratum 

 is said to have been intact and undisturbed, but the human 

 jaw was isolated, the nearest tusk of an elephant being six 

 yards removed from it in horizontal distance. 



Most of the other mammalian bones were found, like these 

 human remains, in or near the gravel, but some of the tusks 

 and teeth of elephants were met with much nearer the sur 

 face. I visited the site of these fossils in 1860, in company 

 with M. van Binkhorst, and we found the description of the 

 ground, published by the late Professor Crahay of Louvain, 

 to be very correct.* The projecting portion of the terrace, 

 which was cut through in making the canal, is called the hill 

 of Caberg, which is flat-topped, sixty feet high, and has a 

 steep slope on both sides towards the alluvial plain. M. van 

 Binkhorst (who is the author of some valuable works on the 

 paleontology of the Maestricht chalk) has recently visited 

 Leyden, and ascertained that the human fossil above mentioned 

 is still entire in the museum of the university. Although 

 we had no opportunity of verifying the authenticity of 

 Professor Crahay's statements, we could see no reason for 

 suspecting the human jaw to belong to a different geological 

 period from that of the extinct elephant. If this were 



* M. van Binkhorst has shown me moir was published in 1836 in the 

 the original MS. read to the Maes- Bulletin de 1' Academic Koyale de 

 tricht Athenseum in 1823. The me- Belgique, torn. iii. p. 43. 



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