ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 223 



pre-historic, and even the modern animals present are 

 believed to indicate a somewhat colder climate than at 

 present. Passing over this doubt, and regarding the 

 bones as those of the contemporaries of man, three 

 hypotheses may be suggested in explanation of their 

 mode of occurrence. (1.) They may be the bones of 

 dead men and animals lying unburied on the surface, 

 or imbedded in alluvial banks cut away by streams. 

 (2.) Sepulchral caves similar to some of those which 

 Dupont has described in the same region, may have 

 been scoured out by water, and their contents mingled 

 promiscuously together. (3.) Men and animals may 

 have been engulfed in open fissures and their bones 

 scattered by subsequent floods of water passing through 

 these caves. Either of these suppositions, and also 

 the present position of the caves, would seem to imply, 

 not merely time, but a large and irregular amount of 

 diluvial force, the precise extent of which it is difficult 

 to ascertain, and in reference to which Sir C. Lyell 

 suggests changes of level and possible eruptions of the 

 Eifel volcanoes, which are only sixty miles distant. 

 In any case, a cutting or clearing out of the valleys 

 into which these caves open, to the extent of 300 

 feet in some places, seems to be required, and the 

 objects found in the caves show that this must, at least 

 in part, have been effected by inundations. 



With regard to the relative probability of the three 

 suppositions above mentioned, the discoveries of M. 

 Dupont in the neighbouring caves of the Lesse would 

 attach some probability to the second. In some of 



