66 IMPLEMENTS OF FLINT AND BONE. chap, iv, 



caverns these proportions were exactly reversed, while at 

 Goffontaine skulls of the bear and other parts of the skeleton 

 were found in their natural numerical proportions. Speaking 

 generally, it may be said that human bones, where any were 

 met with, occurred at all depths in the cave-mud and gravel, 

 sometimes above and sometimes below those of the bear, ele- 

 phant, rhinoceros, hj^ena, &c. 



Some rude flint implements of the kind commonly called 

 flint knives or flakes, of a triangular form in the cross-section 

 (as in fig. 14, p. 118), were found by Schmerling dispersed 

 generally through the cave-mud, but he was too much en- 

 grossed with his osteological inquiries to collect them dili- 

 gently. He preserved some few of them, however, which I 

 have seen in the museum at Liege. He also discovered in 

 the cave of Chokier, two and a half miles southwest from 

 Liege, a polished and jointed needle-shaped bone, with a hole 

 pierced obliquely through it at the base; such a cavity, he 

 observed, as had never given passage to an artery. This in- 

 strument was imbedded in the same matrix with the remains 

 of a rhinoceros.* 



Another cut bone and several artificially shaped flints were 

 found in theEngis cave, near the human skulls before alluded 

 to. Schmerling observed, and we shall have to refer to the 

 fact in the sequel (Chap. VIII.), that although in some forty 

 fossiliferous caves explored by him human bones were the 

 exception, yet these flint implements wei-e universal, and he 

 added that "none of them could have been subsequently in- 

 troduced, being precisely in the same position as the remains 

 of the accompanying animals." " I therefore," he continues, 

 " attach great importance to their presence; for even if I had 

 not found the human bones under conditions entirely favor- 

 able to their being considered as belonging to the ante- 



■s Schmerling, part ii. p. 177. 



