FOOD OF THE CAVE-DWELLEBS. 23 



selves migratory, is manifest by there having been found in four different places 

 Rock-crystal, either wrought or unwrought, which does not occur in the neighbour- 

 ing country, and by the finding at three of them fossil Shells which must have 

 been brought from the Faluns of Touraine (a distance of at least one hundred 

 miles), and all of which have been pierced for suspension. 



Hearths and Cooking. We have also some indications of the domestic economy 

 of this early race in a variety of stones found in these accumulations. 



There are some which have neither served for hearth- nor boiling-stones, but, from 

 their fractured ends, have evidently been used as hammers ; some which, from their 

 being of too great a size for implements of manufacture, and the absence of fracture, 

 may have been used for breaking bones to extract the marrow ; others, from the 

 artificial depression on either side, suitable for firm handling, and from the many 

 fractures of concussion at the outer edge, have no doubt been employed in the 

 manufacture of flint tools. Besides these are small flat slabs of schistose stone, 

 some bearing grooves made by cutting-implements, it may be for sharpening ; 

 and others which, from their smoothness, may have been used as polishers of bone 

 implements ; and, lastly, objects in considerable numbers and found in several 

 places, the use of which it is difficult to conjecture, viz. water-rounded pebbles of 

 various sizes, almost always of granite, the upper surface of which has been arti- 

 ficially hollowed out, leaving a flat saucer-like depression, the size of which varies 

 from an inch to four or five inches in diameter. 



The number of hearths, the great abundance of charcoal, and the presence of 

 many more round quartzose pebbles (often bearing traces of fire) than would be 

 requisite for the uses of the hearth or paving, for the fabrication of flint knives, or 

 for smashing bones, as well as the very small proportion of bones which show the 

 action of fire, all lead to the doubt whether the flesh taken from the large 

 mass of fractured bones found at all the Stations, if it has indeed been cooked, 

 has been cooked by roasting. 



In favour of the food having been cooked, is the abundance of fires, more than 

 in that rude condition of life could be supposed to be required merely for purposes 

 of warmth. If the meat was cooked by roasting at the fire, it is not likely that so 

 many of the bones would escape traces of fire. 



The absence of any sufficient depth of earth between the layers of bones and the 

 rock-floor in the Les Eyzies Cave, where, above all places, both the charcoal and the 

 burnt pebbles are in the greatest abundance, forbids the idea that these cave-dwellers 

 cooked in the manner so long practised by some tribes in North America, and still 



