BRUNIQUEL, AND ITS ORGANIC CONTENTS. 
519 
sively detached, prior to my visit, by the workmen employed by the Vicomte DE Lastic ; 
most of them had been broken up for the extraction of the organic and fabricated 
remains, and the debris thrown down the steep approach to the entry. 
These researches had been commenced by the Vicomte de Lastic in the preceding 
year. Some excavations had been made many years previously, probably in quest of 
nitre during the old revolutionary period of 1792-5, and also subsequently, for scientific 
purposes, bringing to light the organic remains noticed by Marcel de Serres. Of the 
extent of these early explorations I could not obtain any definite idea; no particular 
note of the floor of the cavern having been recorded when the systematic explorations 
were commenced, in 1863, by the Vicomte de Lastic*. 
The appearances noted by me in the exploration of the cavern, January 23, 1864, led 
me to conclude that the original stalagmitic floor, compacted after the cave had ceased 
to be inhabited, had sloped gradually from the circumference to the centre or there- 
abouts, the stalagmite becoming thinner as it receded from the walls. There was 
nothing to support a conclusion that the different levels of the remaining stalagmitic 
floor at the periphery, and of the exposed breccia towards the middle of the cave, were 
due to any uplifting of the cliff, or change of level of the cavern, since the period of its 
habitation ; all the phenomena observed concurred in showing the different levels to be 
the result of the excavations and removals of a great proportion of the original floor and 
of the immediately subjacent breccia. 
This breccia is a conglomerate of mud, with water-worn stones from the bed of the 
adjacent river, chiefly of the grey limestone, and also of the reddish limestone, of which 
the cliffs are composed, with, occasionally, fragments of a quartzose rock. These are 
imbedded in and cemented to the petrified mud of a blackish or reddish colour, in many 
* [The reports of the discoveries made by the Vicomte de Lastic in his -cavern led to visits being made to it 
by Naturalists and Archaeologists from Toulouse and Montauhan. MM. Trutat, Martin, and Garrigou 
communicated some results of their researches, December 10th, 1863, to the Academie Royale de Toulouse, but 
these have not been published. The earliest notice that I have been able to find, in print, is in the ‘ Bulletin 
de la Societe d’Anthropologie de Paris’ for 17th December 1863, in the form of an extract of a letter from 
M. Garrigou ; it is headed “ Decouverte de deux machoires humaines dans' la caveme de Bruniquel (Tarn et 
Garonne).” “ Je suis rentre hier seulement d’une excursion dans le Tarn-et-GaroDne, ou nous avons faites des 
fouilles considerables dans la caverne de Bruniquel,” p. 651. That the cavern so called is the one here described 
I learnt from M. de Lastic, who caused the entry to the cavern to be secured in consequence of these and similar 
visits, attended with unauthorized removal of specimens. No other cavern so called was then, or had been 
previously, known in the vicinity of Bruniquel ; it is therefore the cave noticed by Marcel de Serres. The 
earliest notice in print that I can find of researches by M. Brun, Keeper of the Museum at Montauhan, in 
caverns in the vicinity of Bruniquel, is entitled, “ Sur les fouilles pratiquees par M. Brun dans la caverne-abri 
de Lafaye, in Bruniquel,” in the ‘Bulletin de la Societe d’Anthropologie de Paris,’ 18th Janvier, 1866. “La 
caveme-abri de Lafaye, fouillee avec le plus grand soin sous la direction de M. Brun,” &c. — Op. cit. p. 48. 
There is no evidence that the “ caverne de Bruniquel,” explored by Marcel de Serres, the Vicomte de Lastic, 
and myself, has been known or described by any other name, or that its name has been applied to any other 
cave. It is the one nearest the village, though on the opposite bank of the Aveyron, and in the ‘ Commune de 
Penne.’ — R. 0. July 1869.] 
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