520 
PROFESSOR OWEN’S DESCRIPTION OE THE CAVERN OE 
parts showing vacuities lined by stalagmite, and giving rise to a structure like that of 
travertin. Every part of such breccia is thickly charged with portions and fragments of 
bones, antlers, jaws, and teeth, implements of flint and bone, with here and there a 
shell ; but these are very rare. 
The dark or black colour of the calcified or partly calcified mud or rubble, caused by 
particles of carbon indicative of the burnt fuel in the cavern, so prevails in the upper- 
most 4 or 5 feet of the breccia, that it is called by the workmen the “ limon noir ” 
(fig. 3 i). Beneath this the original reddish colour of the mud prevails, and a depth 
of from 3 to 4 feet has been reached in this so-called “ limon rouge ” (ib. 2 ). In both 
beds the organic contents abound ; in the lowest part which has been reached (ib. 3) 
they become less abundant. 
The major part of the soil of the cavern, broken up and removed at the period of my 
visit, had acquired a degree of hardness, through the percolation of the calciferous drip, 
such as to require short blows of the pick-axe for its disruption ; it was of a density 
which, like that of the travertin at Psestum, might have served for the purposes of a 
building stone. But towards the centre of the floor this density becomes less than 
towards the periphery, the breccia graduating into a kind of rubble. 
The first human skull which was discovered, December 17th, 1863, was preserved in 
the mass of stalagmitic breccia in which it was imbedded and with which it was detached. 
The mass firmly adhered by the stalagmite to the wall of the cavern in the hindmost 
recess, to the left on entering, marked a in figure 4 (plan of horizontal section). The 
skull was about 4 feet below the upper horizontal surface or floor of stalagmite. 
This floor exhibited no signs of recent disturbance ; the workmen were pursuing their 
Eig. 3. 
Vertical transverse section, Cavern of Bruniquel. 
operations to get out stalagmite and breccia in masses convenient for extracting and 
working out the organized contents and implements, when their attention was arrested 
