THE HUMAN SPECIES. 109 



mostly disposed in the crevices of the rock, with 

 evident care, and others were pressed regularly into a 

 cavity, and covered with a flat slab, surrounded by a 

 circle of very clean white stones. By the precautions 

 that had been taken to block up every entrance with 

 walls of stone, and the success with which it had been 

 performed (since the shaft by which an opening was 

 forced did not reach the real entrance) ; the whole 

 manifested that it had been a tribal necropolis, formed 

 with great respect for the dead, at the same time that 

 a strong impression was created of its remote antiquity, 

 from the circumstance of these human remains being 

 accompanied by the head and three teeth of a rhino- 

 ceros, antlers of a small species of reindeer, the head 

 of an extinct species of stag, the shoulder-blade of a 

 very large bovine, and the canon bone of a horse. In 

 this case, we hear of no stalagmite, no red loam ; there 

 is no mention of hyaenas or other carnivorous animals, 

 and only a few remains of herbivora, which may have 

 been deposited in the human ossuary, because they had 

 served for sacrificial purposes in honour of the dead. 

 It is not probable, if they had been found in the loca- 

 lity, when cleared for a sacred purpose, ihat there 

 would not have been many more, and in company with 

 debris of carnassiers, or that they would not, in that 

 case, have been removed without exception. If the 

 ossuary was formed by progenitors of Basque, Eus- 

 carra, or Cantabrian tribes (the most ancient marine 

 Hyperboreans of the Ouralian or Finnic stock in Wes- 

 tern Europe), the presence of sacrificial heads and 



