CHAP. X. POST-PLIOCENE BURIAL-PLACE, SOUTH OF FRANCE. 181 



the Sommo, Thames, or Severn, making timely retreat to the 

 south before the snow and ice set in. 



Burial-place at Aurignac, in the South of France, of Post- 

 pliocene Bate. 



I have alluded in the beginning of the fourth chapter (p. 58) 

 to a custom prevalent among rude nations of consigning to the 

 tomb works of art, once the property' of the dead or objects 

 of their affection, and even of storing up, in many cases, 

 animal food destined for the manes of the defunct in a future 

 life. I also cited M. Desnoyers's comments on the absence 

 among the bones of wild and domestic animals found in old 

 Gaulish tombs of all intermixture of extinct species of quadru- 

 peds, as proving that the oldest sepulchral monuments then 

 known in France (1845) had no claims to high antiquity 

 founded on palajontological data. 



M. Lartot, however, has recently published a circumstantial 

 account of what seems clearly to have been a sepulchral vault 

 of the post-pliocene period, near Aurignac, not far from the 

 foot of the Pyrenees. I have had the advantage of inspect- 

 ing the fossil bones and works of art obtained by him from 

 that grotto, and of conversing and corresponding with him 

 on the subject, and can see no grounds for doubting the sound- 

 ness of his conclusions.* 



The town of Aurignac is situated in the department of the 

 Haute-Garonne, near a spur of the Pyrenees; adjoining it is 

 the small flat-topped hill of Fajoles, about sixty feet above 

 the brook called Rodes, which flows at its foot on one side. 

 It consists of nummulitic limestone, presenting a steep escarp- 

 ment towards the northwest, on which side in the face of the 



* See Lartet, Annales des Mines, in Natural History Review, London, 

 Zoologie, torn. xv. p. 177, translated January, 1862. 



