334 THE TUNDRAS AND STEPPES OF PREHISTORIC EUROPE. 



huinan relics. It yielded some 14,000 flint implements, and a large 

 number of worked bones and antlers, comprising needles, bodkins and 

 awls, chisels, harpoons, whistles, and other objects. Bits of wood 

 worked and charred, and fragments of worked and unworked lignite 

 were also obtained. Besides these, drawings and patterns were found 

 on reindeer antlers, on bones, and on tablets of limestone, while many 

 shells, fossils, and teeth of the arctic fox and the glutton were met with, 

 bored and pierced, as if they had been used for necklaces and other 

 personal ornaments. The presence throughout this relic bed of nuclei 

 or cores from which flints had been struck, of abundant chips and splin- 

 ters, of old hearths, ashes, and burnt bones, shows that the reindeer 

 hunters were for a long time constant occupants of the rock shelter. 



Turning to the abundant animal remains, we find that these represent 

 no fewer than 49 species, viz, 30 mammals, 15 birds, 3 amphibians, and 

 1 fish. All the most characteristic tundra forms — the banded lemming 

 and its peculiar associates — are now absent, and in their place we find 

 a true steppe fauna. Amongst the new arrivals are red suslik, pika, 

 and true hamster, and associated with these are such constant visitors 

 of the steppes as inanul cat, wild horse, dzeggetai, and various birds. 

 Certain forms which appear in the lemming bed are still represented, as 

 arctic fox, glutton, and others — all of which, however, in our own day 

 range south of the true tundras. Their presence therefore is not out 

 of keeping with the characteristic steppe forms. It is clear therefore 

 that in north Switzerland a tundra fauna was eventually succeeded by 

 a steppe fauna. 



Toward the top of the yellow relic bed once more new arrivals begin 

 to put in an appearance, and their presence seems to show that the 

 climate was again gradually changing, for they include red deer, roe 

 deer, wild boar, squirrel, pine marten, and beaver, all of which belong 

 to a forest fauna. 



The next stratum in succession is the breccia bed. This consists of 

 small fragments of limestone, either lying loosely together or cemented 

 by calcareous matter. Relics of man were not so common in this bed, 

 although occasional splintered bones and flint implements occurred all 

 through it, and in places were even abundant. About midway between 

 the top and bottom of the breccia occurred a layer of dark-earth, in 

 which human relics and the remains of various rodents were conspicuous. 

 It would seem that during the accumulation of the breccia bed small 

 groups of reindeer hunters only now and again visited the rock shelter; 

 it was evidently not so continually occupied as it had been. The animal 

 remains met with in the stratum undoubtedly tell a tale of changing 

 climatic conditions. Amongst the species represented are reindeer, 

 pika, hare, squirrel-tailed dormouse, garden dormouse, squirrel, water 

 rat, various voles, shrews, mole, ermine, marten, and others. This is 

 obviously a mixed fauna — a few of the steppe animals being still present, 

 but the larger number of the species are forest forms. The fauna of 



