ROOM VI. FOSSIL HUMAN SKELETON. 483 



floor, some of the wandering tribes of the early Britons may have prowled 

 into the recess, or occasionally sought shelter there ; and stone imple- 

 ments, bones, or any hard substances left on the ground, would soon 

 sink a few feet into the soft ossiferous mud, and become hermetically 

 sealed up, as it were, by the stalagmitic deposit. 



From the phenomena thus rapidly surveyed, we learn that the hills, 

 plains, and forests, of Europe, were once inhabited by unknown species 

 of herbivora, and carnivora, belonging to genera, some of which are 

 annihilated, and others are almost entirely restricted to southern 

 climates ; that some of the caves were tenanted by successive genera- 

 tions of Bears, Hyenas, Wolves, &c. ; and that all these races have 

 become extinct, except the few allied species which still inhabit the 

 European Continent, and Islands. In England, the only living repre- 

 sentatives of the three families of carnivora which swarmed in these 

 latitudes during the Mammoth period, are the FOJC, of the dog tribe, 

 the Wild-cat, of the feline order, and the Badger, of the bear family. 



CHAPTER VL PART VII. 

 FOSSIL HUMAN SKELETON. 



Wall- case D. About forty years since, great interest was excited by 

 the discovery of several human skeletons, male and female, imbedded in 

 limestone on the north-east coast of the Isle of Guadaloupe ; and the 

 specimen now before us, found on board a French vessel captured by one 

 of our cruisers, and presented to the British Museum by Admiral Sir 

 T. Cochrane, afforded English naturalists an opportunity of investi- 

 gating the nature and age of these first known examples of the bones 

 of Man in a fossil state. An excellent memoir by the eminent minera- 

 logist and geologist Mr. Konig, was published in the "Philosophical 

 Transactions" for 1814, in which the nature of these petrifactions was 

 fully elucidated. 



In this specimen the skull is wanting, but the spinal column, many 

 of the ribs, the bones of the left arm and hand, of the pelvis, and 

 of the thighs and legs, though somewhat mutilated, are distinctly 

 seen. The bones still contain some animal matter, and the whole of 

 their phosphate of lime. 1 An entire skeleton was dug up in the usual 

 position of burial adopted by the Peruvians, and is now in the Jardin 

 des Plantes. 2 



1 The skull of this very skeleton is said to be in a museum in South 

 Carolina, having been purchased of a French naturalist, who brought 

 it from Guadaloupe. 



2 See " Wonders of Geology," p. 87. 



