the traces of which they had concealed by depositing the bodies of their victims in this cavity, whose existence was known only to themselves.
In order to put a stop to all these conjectures, Dr. Amiel, at that time Mayor of Aurignac, caused all the human remains to be collected, and re-interred in the parish burial-ground. But previous to this translation of the relics, he ascertained to his own satisfaction, by counting the number of certain homologous portions of the skeletons, that they must have belonged to 17 individuals. Some of the characteristic forms found among them appeared to him referrible to females; whilst other portions, from their incomplete ossification, denoted the presence of young subjects below the age of puberty.[1] It should also be remarked that among the human bones taken from the interior of the cavern, J. B. Bonnemaison distinguished several teeth of large mammals, both carnivorous and herbivorous. He also collected in the same situation, eighteen small discs, pierced in the centre, doubtless that they might be strung together as a necklace or bracelet. These discs, which were of a whitish compact substance, fell into various hands; some were sent, with some mammalian teeth, to M. Leymerie, by M. Vieu, superintendent of roads and bridges at Aurignac, whose researches in this district of the department have afforded numerous and useful materials for the study of the paleontology of the Haute-Garonne.
Shortly afterwards M. Leymerie transmitted to me the mammalian teeth, with the information respecting them with which he had himself been furnished, viz., that they had been found on the mountain of Fajoles. Amongst them I recognized the molars of the Horse, Ox, (Aurochs?) a canine tooth of the Hyena, another canine which appeared to me to belong the great cave Felis, two other teeth of a smaller carnivore, probably a Fox, and, lastly, the point of a Stag's antler.
Subsequently, on my journey to Toulouse, M. Leymerie showed me the small perforated, discoid bodies, which had been sent to him at the same time with the above teeth. The hurried examination that we made of these objects, whose origin had not then been indi-
- ↑ According to the report of Bonnemaison, the mass of human bones, at the time they were removed from the cavern, included two entire crania, but when M. Amiel reached the spot these were no longer so. The operations of removal, transport, and second inhumation, would necessarily occasion other alterations in bones rendered so fragile from their antiquity; but nevertheless the examination of these remains, such as they were, appeared to be very desirable. Measurements taken from the bones of so many individuals, would have afforded, to some extent, the means of deducing the average stature and proportions of this unknown race; and from the fragments of the face and skull, indications of some value, respecting the general form of the head, might also have been obtained. But unfortunately no one at Aurignac, not even the sexton, after an interval of eight years, retained any recollection of the precise spot at which these human remains had been deposited in a oommon trench.
