282 CAUSES OF THE 



the settlement at Concise alone (Lake of Neufchatel) has 

 supplied about 24,000, and yet has not produced a single 

 human skeleton.* Probably this absence of bones is in 

 part attributable to the habit of burying or burning; the 

 instinct of man has long been in most cases to bury his dead 

 out of his sight ; still, so far as the drift of St. Acheul is 

 concerned, the difficulty will altogether disappear if we 

 remember that no trace has ever yet been found of any animal 

 as small as a man. The larger and more solid bones of the 

 elephant and hippopotamus, the ox, horse, and stag f remain, 

 but every vestige of the smaller bones has perished. No one 

 supposes that this scanty list fairly represents the mammalian 

 fauna of this time and place. When we find the remains of the 

 wolf, boar, roedeer, badger, and other animals which existed 

 during the drift period, then, and not till then, we may per- 

 haps begin to wonder at the entire absence of human skeletons. 

 We must also remember that when man lived on the 

 produce of the chase there must have been- a very large 

 number of wild animals to each hunter. Among the Lap- 

 landers, 100 reindeer is the smallest number on which a 

 man can subsist, and no one is considered rich who does not 

 possess at least from 300 to 500. But these are domesti- 

 cated, and a large supply of nourishment is derived from their 

 milk, In the case of wild animals we may safely assume 



* Rapport a la Commission des Mu- used them in preference to all others, 



sees, October, 1861, p. 16. nay almost exclusively, in the manu- 



f The bones of the stag owe their facture of those instruments which 



preservation perhaps to another cause. could be made of bone (Fauna der 



Prof. Riitimeyer tells us that among Pfahlbauten, p. 12). How common the 



the bones from the Pfahlbauten none bones of the stag are in quaternary 



are in better condition than those of strata, geologists know, and we have 



the stag ; this is the consequence, he here, perhaps, an explanation of the 



says, of their " dichten Gefuge, ihrer fact. The antler of the reindeer is also 



Harte und Sprodigkeit, so wie der preferred at the present day by the 



grossen Fettlosigkeit," peculiarities Esquimaux in the manufacture of their 



which recommended them so strongly stone weapons. (Sir E. Belcher, Trans, 



to the men of the Stone age, that they Ethn. Soc. vol. i. p. 139.) 



