were always treated with contemptuous neglect. A fossil skeleton,
found in the schist-rock at Quebec, when excavating the fortifications,
excited but a moment’s incredulous attention; and the well-known
Guadaloupo skeletons were pronounced recent, in a manner the most
summary. Human bones are known to have been found in England,
under circumstances which rendered their fossil condition probable; hut,
owing to prejudice or ignorance, they were cast aside as worthless, or
buried with mistaken reverence. In some instances, they were used,
with the limestone in which they were imbedded, to mend highways;
and at all times were disposed of without examination, or apparent
knowledge of their scientific importance. There is an instance,
recorded by Col. Hamilton Smith, which, whether true or not, trill
serve to show a culpable indifference on this subject. A completely
fossilized human body was discovered at Gibraltar, in 1748. The fact
is related in a manuscript note, inserted in a copy of a dissertation on
the Antiquity of the Earth, by the Rev. James Douglas, read at the
Royal Society, in 1785. In substance, it relates that, while the writer
himself was at Gibraltar, some miners, employed to blow up rocks for
the purpose of raising batteries about fifty feet above the level of the
sea, discovered the appearance of ahum an body'; which they blew up,
because.the officer to whom they sent notiee of the fact did not think
it worth the trouble of examining! One human pelvis found near
Natchez, by Dr. Dickeson, is an undoubted fossil;, yet we are told
that ferruginous oxides act upon an os innominatum differently than
upon bones of extinct genera lying in the same stratum, lest natural
incidents might give to man, in the valley of the Mississippi, an antiquity
altogether incompatible with received ideas: and Sir Charles
Lyell accordingly suggests a speedy solution of, the difficulty, by
saying that a fossilized pelvis may have fallen from an old Indian
grave near the summit of the cliff. Attempts have been made to
throw doubt upon every discovery of human fossils in the same
manner; and the greatest ingenuity is exhibited in adapting adequate
solutions to the ever-varying dilemmas. In the case of the fossils
brought from Brazil, a human skull was taken out of a sandstone
rock, now overgrown with lofty trees. Sir Charles Lyell again had
recourse to his favorite Indian burying-ground; although this time
it had to be sunk beneath the level of the sea, and become again
upheaved to its present position. But, supposing all this to be true,
what an antiquity must we assign to this Indian skull, when we remember
the ancient trees above its grave, and reflect upon the fact
that bones of numerous fossil quadrupeds, and, among others, of a
horse (both found in the alluvial formation), must be of a more recent
origin than the human remains!
Human fossil remains have been most commonly found in caves
connected with the diluvium, usually known as ossuaries or bone-
caverns. These caves occur, for the most part, in the calcareous strata,
as the large caves generally do, and' they have been, in all the instances
we shall cite, naturally closed until their recent discovery. The
floors are covered with what appears to be a bed of diluvial clay, over
which a crust of stalagmite has formed since the clay bed was deposited
; and it is under this double covering of lime and clay that the
bony remains of animals are discovered. As the famous Kirkdale
cavern may serve as a general type of caves of this description, we
will here give a brief sketch of i t : —
The Kirkdale cave is situated on the older portion of the oolite formation—
in the coral-rag and Oxford clay — on the declivity of a
valley. It extends, as an irregular narrow passage, 250 feet into the
hill, expanding here and there into small chambers, but hardly enough
anywhere to allow of a man’s standing upright. The sides and floor
were found covered with a dejosite of stalagmite, beneath which there
was a bed from two to three feet thick of sandy, micaceous loam,
the lower part of which, in particular, contained an innumerable
quantity of bones, with which the floor was completely strewn. The
a n im a l a to which they belonged were the hyena, bear, tiger, lion,
elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, horse, ox, three species of deer,
water-rat, and mouse — appertaining wholly to extinct species. The
most plentiful were hyenas, of which several hundreds were found,
and the animals must have been one-half larger than any living species.
The bears belonged to the cavernous species, which, according
to Cuvier, was of the size of a large horse; The elephants were
Siberian mammoths; and of stags, the largest equalled the moose in
size. Erom all the facts observed, Dr. Buckland concluded, that
the Kirkdale cave had been for a long series of years a den inhabited
by hyenas,* who had dragged into its recesses other animal bodies
whose remains are there commingled with their own, at a period
antecedent to that submersion which produced the diluvium; because
the bones are covered by a bed of1 this formation. Finally raised
from the waters, but with no direct communication with the open
air, it remained undisturbed for a long series of ages, during which
the clay flooring received a new calcareous covering from the droppings
of the roof. Such is a general description of the bone-caves:
but it does not apply to all of those which contained human fossils, as
we shall presently see.
Apart from the geological formation they are found in, the only
* Buckland: Reliquiae Diluvianae.