152 BONES IN THE CAVE OF ARCY. chap. ix. 



cavern occurs in Jurassic limestone, at a slight elevation 

 above the Cure, a small tributary of the Yonne, which last 

 joins the Seine near Fontainebleau, about forty miles south 

 of Paris. The lowest formation in the cavern resembles the 

 "diluvium gris" of Paris, being composed of gi-anitic ma- 

 terials, and like it derived chiefly from the waste of the 

 crj'stalline rocks of the Morvan. In it have been found the 

 two branches of a human lower jaw with teeth well pre- 

 served, and the bones of the Elephas primigenius, Rhinoceros 

 ticliorhinus, Urstis spelcmis, Hijcena spelcea, and Cervus Taran- 

 dns, all spccifieall}' determined b}^ M. Lartet. I have been 

 shown this collection of fossils by M. de Vibraye, and re- 

 marked that the human and other remains were in the same 

 condition and of the same color. 



Above the gray gravel is a bed of red alluvium, made up 

 of fragments of Jui-a limestone, in a red argillaceous matrix, 

 in which were imbedded several flint knives, with bones of 

 the reindeer and horse, but no extinct mammalia. Over this, 

 in a higher bed of alluvium, were several jiolished hatchets 

 of the more modern type called ''celts," and above all loam 

 or cave-mud, in which were Gallo-Eoman antiquities.* 



The French geologists have made as yet too little progress 

 in identifying the age of the successive deposits of ancient 

 alluvium of various parts of the basin of the Seine, to enable 

 us to speculate with confidence as to the coincidence in date 

 of the granitic gravel with human bones of the Grotte d'Arcy 

 and the stone hatchets buried in "gray diluvium" of La Motte 

 Piquet, before mentioned ; but as the associated extinct mam- 

 malia are of the same species in both localities, I feel strongly 

 inclined to believe that the stone hatchets found by M. Gosse 

 at Paris, and the human bones discovered by M. de Yibraye, 

 may be referable to the same period. 



■•■■ Bulletin de la Soci^te Geologique de France, ISGO. 



