129 
examination. At the General Meeting of the Natural His- 
tory Society of Prussian Rhineland and Westphalia, at Bonn, 
on the 2nd of June, 1857,* Dr. Fuhlrott himself gave a full 
account of the locality, and of the circumstances under 
which the discovery was made: He was of opinion that the 
bones might be regarded as fossil; and in coming to this 
conclusion, he laid especial stress upon the existence of den- 
dritic deposits, with which their surface was covered, and 
which were first noticed upon them by Professor Mayer. 
To this communication I appended a brief report on the 
results of my anatomical examination of the bones. The 
conclusions at which I arrived were :—1st. That the extra- 
ordinary form of the skull was due to a natural conforma- 
tion hitherto not known to exist, even in the most barbarous 
races. 2nd. That these remarkable human remains _ be- 
longed to a period antecedent to the time of the Celts and 
Germans, and were in all probability derived from one of 
the wild races of North-western Europe, spoken of by Latin 
writers ; and which were encountered as autochthones by the 
German immigrants. And 3rdly. That it was beyond doubt 
that these human relics were traceable to a period at which 
the latest animals of the diluvium still existed; but that no 
proof of this assumption, nor consequently of their so-termed 
fossil condition, was afforded by the circumstances under 
which the bones were discovered. 
As Dr. Fuhlrott has not yet published his description of 
these circumstances, I borrow the following account of them 
from one of his letters. “A small cave or grotto, high 
enough to admit a man, and about 15 feet deep from the 
entrance, which is 7 or 8 feet wide, exists in the southern 
wall of the gorge of the Neanderthal, as it is termed, at a 
distance of about 100 feet from the Diissel, and about 60 
feet above the bottom of the valley. In its earlier and un- 
injured condition, this cavern opened upon a narrow plateau 
lying in front of it, and from which the rocky wall descended 
* Ib. Correspondenzblatt. No. 2. 
K 
