ents we find, together with the objects of industry
above mentioned, the bones of wild and domestic animals of species now
inhabiting Europe, particularly of deer, sheep, wild-boars, dogs,
horses, and oxen. This fact has been ascertained in Quercy, and other
provinces; and it is supposed by antiquaries that the animals in
question were placed beneath the Celtic altars in memory of sacrifices
offered to the Gaulish divinity Hesus, and in the tombs to commemorate
funeral repasts, and also from a supposition prevalent among savage
nations, which induces them to lay up provisions for the manes of the
dead in a future life. But in none of these ancient monuments have any
bones been found of the elephant, rhinoceros, hyaena, tiger, and other
quadrupeds, such as are found in caves, as might certainly have been
expected had these species continued to flourish at the time that this
part of Gaul was inhabited by man.[1053]

We are also reminded by M. Desnoyers of a passage in Florus, in which it
is related that Caesar ordered the caves into which the Aquitanian Gauls
had retreated to be closed up.[1054] It is also on record, that so late
as the eighth century, the Aquitanians defended themselves in caverns
against King Pepin. As many of these caverns, therefore, may have served
in succession as temples and habitations, as places of sepulture,
concealment, or defence, it is easy to conceive that human bones, and
those of animals, in osseous breccias of much older date, may have been
swept away together, by inundations, and then buried in one promiscuous
heap.

It is not on the evidence of such intermixtures that we ought readily to
admit either the high antiquity of the human race, or the recent date of
certain lost species of quadrupeds.

Among the various modes in which the bones of animals become preserved,
independently of the agency of land floods and engulfed rivers, I may
mention that open fissures often serve as natural pitfalls in which
herbivorous animals perish. This may happen the more readily when they
are chased by beasts of prey, or when surprised while carelessly
browsing on the shrubs which so often overgrow and conceal the edges of
fissures.[1055]

During the excavations recently made near Behat in India, the bones of
two deer were found at the bottom of an ancient well which had been
filled up with alluvial loam. Their horns were broken to pieces, but the
jaw bones and other parts of the skeleton remained to