50 IM;O<:KKI>IN<;S OK THK ANATOMICAL AND ANTH KOI'OI.OCiK'A I. 



caves which he explored have yielded more interesting results. 

 Many of the caverns had never before been entered by scientific 

 observers and their floors were encrusted with stalagmite. He found 

 the bones of man so scattered about as to preclude all idea of their 

 having been intentionally buried on the spot. Their colour too and 

 condition were the same as those of the accompanying animals, many 

 of which are extinct. No gnawed bones were found. He therefore 

 inferred that the caverns had not been the dens of wild beasts, but that 

 their organic and inorganic contents had been swept into them by rivers. 

 The occurrence here and there of bones in a very perfect state, or of 

 several bones of the same skeleton lying in their natural positions and 

 having all their more delicate parts uninjured, was accounted for by 

 supposing that portions of carcases were sometimes floated in during 

 floods while still clothed with flesh. The remains of at least three 

 human individuals were disinterred in the Engis cavern. The skull 

 of one of these was embedded by the side of a mammoth's tooth. It 

 was entire but so fragile as to fall to pieces during its extraction. 

 Numerous rude flint implements were found also all through the cave 

 mud, and though human skeletons were found in but a few caverns 

 the flint implements were universal, and Schmerling declared that 

 none of them could have been subsequently introduced, being pre- 

 cisely in the same position as the remains of accompanying animals. 

 He has therefore no hesitation in coming to the conclusion that 

 man once lived in these districts of France contemporaneously with 

 the cave bear and other extinct quadrupeds. 



At first Sir Charles Lyell was very sceptical as to the great anti- 

 quity claimed for these bones, but about a quarter of a century after- 

 wards he revisited these caverns and found reason to be convinced of 

 the truth of Schmerling's assertions, and speaks thus of the work : 



" To be let down as Schmerling was day after day by a rope tied 

 to a tree so as to slide to the foot of the first opening into the Engis 

 cave, where the best preserved human skulls were found, and after 

 thus gaining access to the first subterranean gallery, to creep on all 

 fours through a contracted passage leading to larger chambers, there 



