10 FOSSIL MEN. 



the reindeer, now confined to Lapland, and not known 

 in Germany since the time of Caesar, while there is 

 no written record of its former existence in Gaul, 

 afforded a large part of the food of the inhabitants. 

 There is even evidence that these earlier Stone people 

 hunted the now extinct mammoth and its contem- 

 poraries. We may take as an example the cave of 

 Bruniquel in the south of France. It has apparently 

 been used both as a house and as a place of sepulture, 

 and since its occupation a layer of hard stalagmite has 

 accumulated over the earth and carbonaceous matter 

 of its floor. Professor Owen, who examined the bones 

 obtained in it, estimated the number of reindeer re- 

 presented in his collections at 1000.* There were 

 also numerous bones of a species of horse. With 

 these were remains of ten human beings, abundance of 

 flint flakes, and numerous bone implements, including 

 harpoons exactly like those now used by the Esqui- 

 maux. On many of the bones were carved figures of 

 animals. Portions of four implements made of mam- 

 moth ivory, and needles and pins of bone, were also 

 found, and sea-shells both from the Mediterranean and 

 Atlantic, some at least of which must have been used 

 as ornaments merely. At the time when these and 

 similar earlier Flint folk lived, France would seem to 

 have been in part overgrown with dense forests, and 

 in part connected with great steppes or prairies ex- 

 tending over all central Europe; its climate must have 

 been cool enough for the reindeer, and possibly the 

 * " Transactions of the Eoyal Society." 



