22 Sir H. S. Soioorth — AntiquUy of Man. 



which they had been made. The surfaces exposed by this splitting, 

 as well as the outer circumference where it was smooth, were 

 covered with small clusters of minute and extremely delicate 

 dendrites ; so also was the circumference of some small fragments 

 of rings made of the same ivory, and found with the rods, being 

 nearly of the size and shape of segments of a small teacup handle. 

 The rings, when complete, were four or five inches in diameter. 

 The rings, rods, and shells lay in the same red substance that 

 enveloped the bones, and were stained superficially with it, and 

 had evidently been buried at the same time as the woman. In 

 another place were found three fragments of the same ivory, which 

 had been cut into unmeaning forms by a rough-edged instrument, 

 probably a coarse knife, the marks of which remained on all their 

 surfaces. '•' One of these fragments was nearly of the shape and size 

 of a human tongue, and its surface was smooth as if it had been 

 applied to some use in which it became polished ; its surface was 

 also covered with dendrites like that of the rods ; there was found 

 also a rude instrument resembling a short skewer or chopstick, 

 and made of the metacarpal bone of a wolf, sharp, and flattened to 

 an edge at one end, and terminated at the other by the natural 

 rounded condyle of the bone. . . . No metallic instruments 

 have as yet been found with these remains. . . . The ivory rods 

 and rings and tongue-shaped fragment were certainly made from 

 the antediluvian tusks that lay in the same cave, and must have 

 been cut from the ivory when hard and not crumbling to pieces, 

 as it is at present on the slightest touch, whence we may assume 

 their high antiquity." 



We can hardly doubt with our present knowledge that these bones 

 were those of a Palgeolithic woman, and it seems a real pity that our 

 famous Dean, whose acuteness was so remarkable, should have been 

 entirely blinded by his prepossessions in favour of a quite impossible 

 and quite unattested Biblical chronology in arguing, as he did, that 

 the bones, etc., had been buried subsequently to the burial of the 

 bones of the extinct beasts, for this discovery ought to have secured 

 for England what was much later secured for Belgium by Schmerling 

 — the honour of the settlement of one great question in the issue, 

 the historical development of which we are tracing, namely, the 

 contemporaneity of man and the extinct beasts. 



Let us now turn to France. In a letter written on the 25th of 

 October, 1828, on the caverns of Bize, Tournal tells that he had 

 found in the same strata human bones and those of extinct species 

 with the same physical and chemical features, " jouissant tons deux 

 des memes caracteres physiques et chimiques. Ces observations 

 peuvent faire mettre en question I'existence de I'homme a I'etat 

 fossile." And he continues : " The generally admitted proposition, 

 therefore, that on our actual continents there do not occur human 

 fossil bones, must be treated as doubtful, or, at all events, is 

 unestablished." Tournal at the same time allows that it is possible 

 the human bones and the specimens of living species of shells found 

 in the Bize caverns may have been carried in by subsequent currents 

 of water, which rearranged the contents of the caves. 



