248 lECTUEE IX. 



minutely explored by him and some of tliem emptied of their 

 contents, and each bone separately examined. Schmerling 

 obsei-ves on the condition of the fossil human bones in his pos- 

 session : — " They, like the thousands of bones which I have 

 collected within a short time, are characterised by the degree 

 of their decomposition, which is quite the same as that of the 

 extinct animals. All, with few exceptions, are broken ; some 

 are rounded, as is frequently observed in other bones. The 

 fractures are transverse or oblique ; nowhere a trace of being 

 gnawed ; the colour, varying from yellow to black, does not 

 differ from that of other bones. These are all lighter than 

 fresh bones, excepting such as are covered with a layer of chalk 

 tuff or have their cavities filled with such a deposit." 



The most important object in Schmerling^s collection is the 

 upper part of a skull from the eyebrows to the occipital 

 foramen, which was foimd in the cavern of Engis at the depth 

 of If- meter, in an osseous breccia one meter in width, 1^ me- 

 ter in height, attached to the wall of the cave. The earth 

 which covered this skull showed no trace of having been dis- 

 turbed ; it contained the remains of small animals, teeth of the 

 rhinoceros, horse, of hyenas, bears, and ruminants, which sur- 

 rounded the skuU on all sides. In order to rgach the cave, 

 Schmerhng and his companions had to descend by means of a 

 rope attached to a nearly perpendicular rocky wall. In a sort 

 of antechamber five meters in width, six meters high, and 

 seventeen meters deep, was seen near the opening of the cave 

 a layer of osseous earth two meters in thickness. In this were 

 found, besides the usual animal bones, an incisor, a vertebra, 

 and a finger bone, all human, together with several stone 

 hatchets of triangular shape. A little beneath this cave was 

 a second aperture leading to another chamber, twelve meters 

 deep, five meters high, and four meters wide ; this again led 

 into a semicircular gallery which contained many bones, and 

 terminated in a narrow fissure preventing any further advance. 

 There is on the other side a rising gallery leading into a small 

 hall, which seems filled with osseous earth. Here it was that 

 the skull, which we shall henceforth call the Engis skull, was 

 discovered. Besides this, was found the skull of a younger 



I 



