discovered at Breingues , in the Department Du Lot. SOI 
Breingues was occupied with those of which the present article 
is intended to furnish some account. In one, among others, of 
which the opening was almost concealed by the rocks, the en- 
trance was found choked up with earth. The labourers hastened 
to clear it out, and on coming to the depth of three feet, they 
found the bones of a human body, beside which was an iron 
instrument resembling a fork with two prongs. This circum- 
stance tended to redouble their exertions, and the digging was 
continued in a perpendicular direction, with the aid of a capstan, 
to the depth of eighteen metres; but the natural cavity, which 
had uniformly, until now, shewn a straight direction, here pre- 
sented three cavities, equally filled up with earth and stones. 
The workmen first followed that which brought them nearest 
the first grotto, and were presently arrested by three large stones, 
placed above one another by the hand of man. After having 
removed them, they remarked that each of them was of a red- 
dish and earthy colour upon one of its faces, like all those which 
are at the present day raised from the surface of the ground, and 
that the opposite face was covered with mosses and byssi ; — a 
circumstance which evidently shewed that these stones had for a 
long time remained in the open air before they had been removed 
thus far under ground. It was not doubted that they closed the 
cavity in which the treasure must have been deposited ; but in 
place of this treasure, they found nothing but a prodigious quan- 
tity of bones, some of them mingled with the earth or stones, and 
others very carefully placed in narrow fissures of the rode. Se- 
veral heads of a species of deer, at the present day unknown, 
and many other bones, were discovered, without any mixture of 
earth, in a small cavity, covered over with a rude slab, placed 
with great care. It ought to be remarked also, that here and 
there the mass of stones and common soil was interrupted by 
small quantities of an alluvial earth, composed of clay and sand, 
similar to that which the river Sele deposits at the present day. 
It was not only found that no current of water could have 
brought it there, but it could not be doubted that those small 
heaps of alluvial earth had been formed by men, since they were 
pressed, regularly arranged, and entirely surrounded with small 
calcareous stones of a very white colour, and which must have 
yoL. xiv. xo. 28. April 1826. 
u 
