above the actual level of the water. It presented a very regular vault, terminating in a pointed extremity. It was 3 meters broad and 2.5 meters high just behind the mouth, but this orifice itself was so constricted that it did not allow of the passage of a human body. This constricted opening, elevated above the floor of the cave, conducted to an external, prominent, irregular plateau. The floor of the cave was covered with a layer of loam (2 meters in depth), the surface of which was on the level with the lower border of entrance constriction as well as with the surface of the deposits outside of the cave. The bones of the "Neanderthal man" lay 60 centimeters below the surface in this loam. Dr. C. Fuhlrot succeeded in saving the calvarium, the two femurs, both humeri, both ulnæ (nearly complete), the right radius, the left pelvic bone, a fragment of the right scapula, five pieces of rib, and the right clavicle. The loam also contained a few small, scattered nodules of flint.
The above is all that we know in regard to the Feldhofer cave and its contents. No competent scientist has seen the skeleton in situ. The bones were discovered by workingmen, who were demolishing the cave, and when Fuhlrot arrived the loam and bones had already been thrown out of the cave, and in part precipitated into the ravine. It is not known whether the discovery was that of a complete skeleton or not, and how the bones were disposed. The loam has never been seriously examined petrographically and no one has studied in a thorough manner the interior of the cave or the crevices by which it communicated with the surface.
More recent researches concerning the cave and its contents, and particularly its crevices, have not cleared, but in some respects have rather augmented the difficulties of a definite determination of the age of the skeleton. It is certain that its exact age is in no way defined, either geologically or stratigraphically.
NEANDERTHAL MAN NO. 2.
Messrs. Rautert, Klaatsch, and Koenen have given to science a "Neanderthal man" No. 2. The age of this speciment is said to be much more recent than that of No. 1, but even thus the discovery is problematical. It consists of parts of a skeleton, without the skull, found in the loess which covers the upper plateau of the country. The bones lay at the distance of about 200 meters to the west of the Neanderthal cave, and at the depth of 50 centimeters beneath the surface. According to Rautert the loess occupied the remnant of a destroyed cave, in which case there can be no doubt that it was washed into the cave posteriorly to its deposition on the plateau. The bones may have been washed in at the same time, or they may have been buried in the cave later. Nothing was found with the skeleton which might give an indication of its age.
