VOLCANOS OF THE HAUTE LOIRE AND THE ARDECHE. 259 
Mr. Scrope as containing bones of these animals, one of our 
first visits was to Polignac and Mont Denise. The rock of 
Polignac is one of those strange pyramidal rocks of basaltic 
breccia similar to the Rochers de Corneille and St. Michel at 
Le Puy. The Castle, of which little remains save the great 
tower and donjon keep, was once an important feudal strong- 
hold, the abode of a race of tyrants who were the terror of 
the surrounding country. It was built upon a Roman site, 
for in the museum at Le Puy are many Roman relics which 
were found among its mouldering walls. The site is now over- 
grown with low shrubs, grass, and wild flowers, among which 
there still lies a slab of stone with a Roman inscription of the 
time of Tiberius, and a large bearded head which appears to be 
that of Jupiter, the mouth of which has evidently been used as 
a spout. South of the castle, at a short distance to the right of 
the road, near a place marked by a cross, is a ridge of consoli- 
dated drift, regularly stratified, containing lumps of granite, 
some as large as cannon balls, with fragments of lava. Two 
visits which we afterwards made over and around Mont Denise 
convinced me that this conglomerate is a diluvium made up of 
rock fragments washed down from above, and that it occupies 
at Denise fissures and hollows which are the localities, in all 
probability, from which the teeth and bones of the mammoth 
were obtained. The granite, before it was drifted, was, I do 
not doubt, blown out by volcanic explosions, as fragments are 
found on the surface of Mont Denise. 
I think it necessary to separate these aqueous drifts and 
stratified conglomerates with mammoth remains from the vol- 
canic muds and breccias. They look much more like those 
drifts which are the result of melting snows and running water, 
and it is important to remark them whenever they occur, as 
belonging to the period we term glacial. They not only occur 
in valleys, as below Polignac, but are heaped against the sides 
of the hill of Denise, above Polignac, and Captain Price and I 
found them beyond u the Chimney,” on the road to Brioude, 
high up on the western flank of Mont Denise, and again on the 
north-east flank of the hill near the peperino quarries. L’Her- 
mitage is the name of a little hostel below Mont Denise, on the 
road from Le Puy to Brioude, and it was near this place that 
the human skull and other bones in the Museum of Le Puy 
were said to have been found in a block of breccia. As I have 
already hinted, we never liked the look of these human bones, 
and since investigating the site whence, as we were told, 
they came, we liked them less than ever. We were conducted 
by the man who declares he found them when digging a well 
near the little auberge where he now resides, and he showed 
us the spot above the well, now built over by a wall, where the 
