180 THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 



bear and hyaena, had been partially emptied of its contents by 

 some primitive tribe, who had broken up the bones of the extinct 

 animals, not for their marrow, but to make tools and ornaments 

 of them, and had subsequently used the cave as a place of burial, 

 and the ground in front of it for " feasts for the dead." If the 

 bones are still so perfect as M. Lartet asserts, they must have been 

 quite sound when first disturbed at the early historical time in 

 which the cave may have been ransacked. Further, the skeleton 

 of Ursus spelams found in the interior, was below the place of de- 

 posit of the human skeletons ; and we can suppose it to have been 

 contemporaneous, only by the unlikely theory that the earth con- 

 taining this skeleton was placed in the cave by the aboriginal 

 people.* 



We give the above leading cases as examples of the rest which 

 are cited, and all of which may in like manner be divided into 

 those which afford probable, though not absolutely certain evi- 

 dence of post-pliocene man, and those which are liable to too 

 grave suspicion to be accepted as evidence. It may be said that 

 we should be more ready to believe, and less critical, but it is not 

 the wont of geologists to be so, when new facts and conclusions 

 are promulgated : and the present case involves too important con- 

 sequences, both in relation to history, and to the credibility of 

 geological proof in general, to escape the most searching criticism. 

 Geologists must beware lest their science, at the point where 

 it comes into contact with other lines of investigation, and 

 where its own peculiar methods are most liable to err, should 

 be found wanting-, and its reliability fall into discredit. 



But when did the fossil mammals named above, really become 

 extinct. As a preliminary to our answer to this question, we may 

 state that in Western Europe, in the post-pliocene period of geolo- 

 gists, these animals were contemporary with many still extant, 

 some of them in Europe, others elsewhere. Pictet even main- 

 tains that all, or nearly all of our modern European mammals co-ex- 

 isted with these animals in the post-pliocene period, and that con- 

 sequently there has since that time been a progressive diminution 

 of species down to the present day. The mammoth, JElephas pri- 

 migenius, existed, or perhaps began to exist at a still more ancient 



* It is certainly very curious that the objects and arrangements of 

 these caves and other ancient European depositories, are so thoroughly 

 American, even to the round stone hammers, whose use is so oddly mis- 

 interpreted by the Danish antiquaries. 



