The bones on the outside of the grotto were found to be split open, as if for the extraction of the marrow, and many of them burned. The spongy parts were wanting, having been gnawed off by the hyenas. M. Lartet came to the conclusion that this grotto was a place of sepulchre, and the broken or split bones were the remnants of the funeral feasts. This he argued from the fact that the bones within the grotto were not split, broken or gnawed, save the astragalus of the mammoth. This meat was placed in the grotto, probably as an offering to the dead. The bones without the cave were scraped, and while the men were yet engaged in the funeral feast, the hyenas prowled about the spot, and at the close of the banquet, devoured the flesh that remained. The slab in front of the cave debarred their entrance, and consequently the bones and human remains within were left untouched. The observations made by M. Cartailhac, in 1870, lead to different conclusions. On close inspection, he discovered a difference in the color of the walls of the cave, indicating that the lower deposit was of a yellow color, and the next above of a much lighter tint. In the crevices of the lower he found a tooth of the rhinoceros, one of the reindeer, and some fractured bones of the cave-bear. In the higher deposit occurred some small bones of living animals and of man, and a fragment of pottery. From these evidences, M. Cartailhac inferred that the lower deposits of the grotto corresponded with that outside of it, and the layer containing human bones was formed at a subsequent time. That this grotto was a place of resort at a very early period is proven from the numerous remains of the cave-bear. This animal was one of the first of those great post-tertiary mammalia to become extinct. The exact position of the remains of the reindeer is not given. If its bones were intermixed with the others and found in the lowest as well as the other layers, it would indicate that the climate was not very warm during the deposit of the layers, but to have been similar to that of Switzerland of the present day. The probability is, the reindeer bones did not occur in the lowest layer, and hence that layer was formed during the tropical climate, and the reindeer bones and human skeletons were consigned to the grotto about the close of the inter-glacial, or beginning of the reindeer epoch. The fossil man of Denise, taken from an old volcanic tuff, must be assigned to this period, since there have been found, in similar blocks of tuff in the same region, the remains of the cave-hyena and hippopotamus major. This fossil man consists of a frontal part of the skull, the upper jaw, with teeth, belonging to both an adult and young individual; a radius, some lumbar vertebræ, and some metatarsal bones. The tuff is light and porous, and none of the bones penetrate into the more compact rock.