ioo PREHISTORIC E UROPE. 



In certain of the river- valleys in Belgium, particularly in those 

 of the Lesse, the Molignee, and the Samson, which are tribu- 

 taries of the Meuse, a number of fine caves and rock-shelters 

 occur. They have all proved more or less interesting to the 

 archseologist and geologist, and the evidence they furnish as to 

 the contemporaneity of man and the old mammalia, and the 

 prolonged duration of the Pleistocene Period, is most complete. 

 Of late years they have been very carefully examined by 

 M. Dupont, director of the Eoyal Museum in Brussels. 1 No 

 fewer than forty-three caverns in the valleys of the Lesse and 

 the Molignee have been scientifically examined, and of these 

 twenty -five have yielded traces of man. M. Dupont's con- 

 clusions, therefore, based as they are upon such a broad founda- 

 tion of personal experience, could hardly fail to be both interest- 

 ing and suggestive. It is a very great advantage that so many 

 caves should have been examined by one man, because he is 

 able to say what features of the evidence are invariable, and 

 what may be looked upon as accidental. Thus, if such an 

 observer shall find that certain phenomena are present in every 

 case, he will accord to these a due importance in his endeavours 

 to arrive at the meaning of the evidence; while an equally 

 careful observer, whose attention had been directed to only one 

 or two caves, and these perhaps widely separated, might likely 

 enough fail to give needful weight to some parts of the evidence, 

 and even miss their meaning altogether. 



The caves described by M. Dupont vary considerably in size, 

 some being large and roomy, and more or less easy of access, 

 while others are mere narrow crevices and rock-shelters. They 

 occur in the rocky escarpments at different levels above the 

 streams, from a few yards up to nearly 200 feet. The floor- 

 deposits consist generally of alternations of fluviatile sediment, 

 with layers of stalagmite, and what we may term bone-beds. 

 These are the more ancient accumulations, and they abound in 

 relics and remains of the Palaeolithic Period. Above the Palaeo- 



1 The descriptions given above are taken from M. Dupont's interesting volume 

 already cited. 



