The researches of the Rev. S. W. King, in 1865, complete the case against the current view of the palæolithic character of the interments, since they show that M. Lartet did not fully explore the cave, and that he consequently wrote without being in possession of all the facts. The entrance was blocked up, according to Bonnemaison, by a slab of stone, which, if the measurements of the entrance be correct, must have been at least nine feet long and seven feet high, placed, according to M. Lartet, to keep the hyænas from the corpses of the dead. It need hardly be remarked, that the access of these bone-eating animals to the cave would be altogether incompatible with the preservation of the human skeletons, had they been buried at the same time. The enormous slab was never seen by M. Lartet, and it did not keep out the hyænas. In the collection made by the Rev. S. W. King from the interior there are two hyænas’ teeth, and nearly all the antlers and bones bear the traces of the gnawing of these animals. The cave, moreover, has _two_ entrances instead of one, as M. Lartet supposed when his paper in the “Annales” was published. The bones of the sheep, or goat, also obtained from the inside, and preserved in the Christy Museum, afford strong evidence that the interment is not palæolithic; and a fragment of pottery, agreeing exactly with that used in the neolithic age, probably indicates its relative antiquity. This conclusion has also been arrived at by the two most recent explorers, MM. Cartaillac and Gautier. The skeletons, therefore, in the Aurignac cave cannot be taken to be of the same age as the stratum on which they rested; but, so far as there is any evidence, may probably be referred to the neolithic age, in which the custom of burial in caves prevailed throughout Europe. _Cavern of Bruniquel._