344 PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



with incisions and cuts such as only a sharp instrument could 

 have produced. These interesting remains were disinterred from 

 the Pliocene of Poggiarone, in the valley of the Pine ; and from 

 the position in which they were found, and the character of the 

 deposits in which they were embedded, it appeared evident that 

 the whale had been stranded in shallow water upon the shores 

 of one of the islands in the Pliocene archipelago of Central Italy. 

 The manner in which the bones have been cut certainly seems 

 suggestive of human handiwork. The incisions- are entirely 

 confined to the outside faces of the rib bones, and to the 

 apophyses of the vertebrae ; while the internal surfaces are 

 invariably intact. Professor Capellini informs me that the 

 shoulder-blade of a little cetacean recently received by him is 

 marked on one side only with incisions forming nearly a circle. 

 According to him and others these appearances could only be 

 produced by the hand of man, and from the position occupied 

 by the debris of the skeleton the Bologna professor has con- 

 vinced himself that the animal was stranded when discovered 

 by man, who, by means of flint knives or other sharp instru- 

 ments, hacked away such morsels as he wished. It must 

 have been lying on its left side when it was operated upon, 

 for it is upon the bones of the right side only that the 

 sharp incisions and cuts occur. Similar cut bones of ceta- 

 ceans have been discovered in the Pliocene of other localities, 

 from which it is inferred that whales, both large and small, fre- 

 quently ran aground upon the margin of the old Pliocene sea, 

 just as they do now upon our present shores. These discoveries 

 appear to have been made invariably in beach-deposits, close to 

 the margin of the ancient sea — the rocks forming which are 

 frequently bored by lithophagi, as, for example, near Santa Luce, 

 in the valley of the Fine, which must have been at that time a 

 fiord. 1 The cut bones have been examined by many competent 

 osteologists, who agree with Capellini that the markings are 

 man's handiwork, and who have testified to the authenticity of 



1 L'Uomo pliocenico in Toscana, Atti delta Reale Accademia dei Lincei, Ser. 

 2, t. iii. 



