CHAP, vi.] NO TRACES OF INTERGLACIAL MAN. 145 



The Lignites of Durnten present no Traces of Man. 



The lignites of 1 Durnten and Utznach, before men- 

 tioned, reveal to us the forests covering the Cantons of 

 Zurich and St. Gall during the mid Pleistocene age, and 

 which still continue to flourish in the same region. They 

 consisted of spruce firs (Pinus abies), Scotch firs, and 

 mountain pines (P. sylvestris and P. montana), larches, 

 yews, birches, and sycamores, with an undergrowth of 

 hazel. In them were to be met the straight -tusked 

 elephant (E. antiquus), the big-nosed rhinoceros (R. 

 MerJcii, Jager), the urus, and the stag, all of which lived 

 in the mid Pleistocene period in the area of the lower 

 Thames. These deposits of lignite, formed on the swampy 

 sides of a lake, rest on a series of clays with stones that 

 have been deposited by a retreating glacier, and they 

 are also covered with a similar deposit of a glacier which 

 occupied that area after the disappearance of the forest, 

 and they are therefore interglacial. 



To the animals found in the lignite beds, Professors 

 Eiitimeyer and Schwendauer have added man, on data 

 which seem to me unsatisfactory. Several sticks about 

 the size and .shape of a cigar, with their outsides en- 

 veloped by fibres running at right angles to their long 

 axes, are considered to be the remains of a kind of fossil 

 basket-work. In the summer of 1877, on examining 

 these specimens at Basel, thanks to the kindness of Pro- 

 fessor Eiitimeyer, I was struck by their resemblance to 

 knots out of rotten pine trunks, in which a similar form 

 is frequently to be observed. As the woody fibre of the 



1 Heer, Primeval World of Switzerland, ii., Appendix 1, c. 12. Riiti- 

 meyer, Archiv fur Anthropologie, Aug. 1875, p. 133 ; Ueber die Herlcunft 

 unserer Thierwelt, 4 to, 1867, p. 52 et s>>q. 



L 



