Ell THE NEANDERTHAL MAN 169 



remarkable conformation, which was, in the first instance, read 

 on the 4th of February, 1857, at the meeting of the Lower Rhine 

 Medical and Natural History Society, at Bonn. 1 Subsequently 

 Dr. Fuhlrott, to whom science is indebted for the preservation 

 of these bones, which were not at first regarded as human, and 

 into whose possession they afterwards came, brought the cranium 

 from Elberfeld to Bonn, and entrusted it to me for more accurate 

 anatomical examination. At the General Meeting of the Natural 

 History Society of Prussian Rhinelandand Westphalia, at Bonn, 

 on the 2nd of June, 1857, 2 Dr. Fuhlrott himself gave a full 

 account of the locality, and of the circumstances under which 

 the discovery was made. He was of opinion that the bones 

 might be regarded as fossil ; and in coming to this conclusion, 

 he laid especial stress upon the existence of dendritic deposits, 

 with which their surface was covered, and which were first 

 noticed upon them by Professor Mayer. To this communication 

 I appended a brief report on the results of my anatomical ex- 

 amination of the bones. The conclusions at which I arrived 

 were : 1st. That the extraordinary form of the skull was due 

 to a natural conformation hitherto not known to exist, even in 

 the most barbarous races. 2nd. That these remarkable human 

 remains belonged to a period antecedent to the time of the Celts 

 and Germans, and were in all probability derived from one of 

 the wild races of North-western Europe, spoken of by Latin 

 writers ; and which were encountered as autochthones by the 

 German immigrants. And 3rdly. That it was beyond doubt 

 that these human relics were traceable to a period at which the 

 latest animals of the diluvium still existed ; but that no proof 

 of this assumption, nor consequently of their so-termed fossil 

 condition, was afforded by the circumstances under which the 

 bones were discovered. 



"As Dr. Fuhlrott has not yet published his description of 

 these circumstances, I borrow the following account of them 

 from one of his letters. * A small cave or grotto, high enough 



1 VerhandL d. Naturhist. Vcrcins der preuss. Rheinlande 

 und Westphalcns., xiv. Bonn, 1857. 



2 Ib. Correspondenzblatt. No. 2. 



