served as a place of sacrifice and of burial.  In 1860 M. Lartet visited the spot.  In the layer of loose earth at the bottom of the cave he found flint implements, worked portions of a reindeer’s horn, mammal bones, and human bones in a remarkable state of preservation.  In a lower layer of charcoal and ashes, indicating the presence of man and some ancient fireplace or hearth, the bones of the animals were scratched and indented as though by implements employed to remove the flesh; almost every bone was broken, as if to extract the marrow, as is done by many modern tribes of savages.  The same peculiarity is noticed in the bones discovered among the “water-huts” of the Danish lakes.

In this deposit M. Lartet picked up many human implements, such as bone knives, flattened circular stones supposed to have been used for sharpening flint knives, perforated sling-stones, many arrow-heads and spear-heads, flint knives, a bodkin made of a roebuck’s horn, various implements of reindeers’ horn, and teeth beads, from the teeth of the great fossil bear (Ursus spelaeus).  Remains were also found of nine different species of carnivora, such as the fossil bear, the hyena, cat, wolf, fox, and others, and of twelve of herbivora, such as the fossil elephant, the rhinoceros, the great stag, (Cervus elephas,) the European bison, (aurochs,) horse, and others.  The most common were the aurochs, the reindeer, and the fox.  How savages, armed only with flint implements, could have captured these gigantic animals, is somewhat mysterious; but, as M. Lartet suggests, they may have snared many of them, or have overwhelmed single monsters with innumerable arrows and spears, as Livingstone describes the slaying of the elephant by the negroes at the present day.

With reference to the mode in which these remains were brought to this place, M. Lartet remarks,—­“The fragmentary condition of the bones of certain animals, the mode in which they are broken, the marks of the teeth of the hyena on bones, necessarily broken in their recent condition, even the distribution of the bones and their significant consecration, lead to the conclusion that the presence of these animals and the deposit of all these remains are due solely to human agency.  Neither the inclination of the ground nor the surrounding hydrographical conditions allow us to suppose that the remains could have been brought where they are found by natural causes.”

The conclusion, then, in palaeontology, which would be drawn from these facts is, that man must have existed in Europe at the same time with the fossil elephant and rhinoceros, the gigantic hyena, the aurochs, and the elk, and even the cave-bear.  This latter animal is thought by many to have disappeared in the very opening of the Post-Pliocene Period; so that this cave would—­judging from the remains of that animal—­have been prior to the long period of inundations in which the drift-deposits of Abbeville and Amiens were made.  The drift which fills the valleys of the Pyrenees has not, it is evident, touched this elevated spot in Aurignac.