GOSSIP ON ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 97. 



house. We do not for a moment suppose that Abraham originated 

 this custom — but it may have been an antediluvian one, — and we 

 therefore have a warranty to search for an antediluvian cave or 

 grotto set apart for the sacred rite of burial. Sir Charles Lyell 

 has found one, which he says •' seems clearly to have been a 

 sepulchral vault of the post-pliocene! period," near Aurignac, not 

 far from the foot of the Pyrenees, thus carrying back its age tens 

 of thousands of years probably before the assumed period of man's 

 creation. 



It is a grotto in the side of the hill of Fajoles, near the town 

 of Aurignac, in the department of the Haute-Garonnc, near a spur 

 of the Pyrenees. The discovery was made by a workman (Bonne- 

 maison), who observed that rabbits when chased ran to this spot to 

 burrow. On reaching into the hole, he laid hold of. and drew out, 

 much to his surprise, one of the long bones of a human skeleton. 

 Digging into the talus he came to a large stone slab, which formed 

 the closure of a grotto, the inside of which was almost filled with 

 bones, among which were tw^o human skulls. He communicated 

 the cuxumstance to M. Amiel, the mayor of Aurignac, and the 

 discovery made a great sensation. The bones were all re-interred 

 in the parish cemetery, but not before M. Amiel, who was a medical 

 man, and had a knowledge of anatomy, ascertained that they must 

 have formed part of seventeen skeletons of both sexes and all ages, 

 some so young that the ossification of the bones was incomplete. 

 He also remarked that they must have been a race of small stature. 

 Unfortunately the skulls were injured in the transfer, and after the 

 lapse of eight years, when M. Lartet visited Aurignac, and a 

 fui'ther investigation was about to be made, the sexton was unable 

 to tell where the remains had been buried, and they have not been 

 re-discovered to this day. 



Outside this cave, among ashes and some overlying earthy layers, 

 separating the ashes from the talus, were a great varietv of bones 

 and implements — a stone of a circular form flattened on two sides, 

 arrows without barbs, other tools made of reindeers' horns, and a 

 bodkin formed out of the more compact horn of a roe deer. 

 Among the cinders outside the vault were fragments of fissile sand- 

 stone reddened by heat, which were observed to rest on a level sur- 

 face of nummulitic limestone, and to have formed a hearth. There 

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