“... The presence, at all levels, of the same kind of flint scrapers, as finely chipped as those of the Gorge d’Enfer, and of the same animals as in that classic station, evidently shows them to be relics of the successive habitation of the Cro-Magnon shelter by the same race of nomadic hunters, who at first could use it merely as a rendezvous, where they came to share the spoils of the chase taken in the neighbourhood; but coming again, they made a more permanent occupation, until their accumulated refuse and the débris gradually raised the floor of the cave, leaving the inconvenient height of only 1·20 metre between it and the roof; and then they abandoned it by degrees, returning once more at last to conceal their dead there. No longer accessible, except perhaps to the foxes above noticed, this shelter, and its strange sepulture, were slowly and completely hidden from sight by atmospheric degradation bringing down the earthy covering, which, by its thickness, alone proves the great antiquity of the burial in the cave.” These conclusions as to the age of the burial do not seem to me to be supported by the facts of the case. That the cave was inhabited by a tribe of palæolithic hunters there can be no doubt, but no evidence has been brought forward that it was used by them for the burial of their dead. They “abandoned it by degrees,” but what proof is there that _they_ “returned once more to conceal their dead”? The interments are at a higher horizon than the strata of occupation, and therefore later, and although palæolithic implements have been found “near” them, the value of the latter, in indicating the date, is destroyed by their occurrence throughout the old floors below. If we suppose that long after the cave had been inhabited by the hunters of the reindeer, it was chosen by a family as a burial-place, all the conditions of the discovery will be satisfied. The pre-existent strata would be disturbed in the process of burial, and the burrowing of foxes, and possibly of rabbits, might bring the palæolithic implements into close association with the human bones. Taking the whole evidence into account, I should feel inclined to assign the interment to the neolithic age, in which cave-burial was so common; but whatever view be held, the facts do not warrant the human skeletons being taken as proving the physique of the palæolithic hunters of the Dordogne, or as a basis for an inquiry into the ethnology of the palæolithic races. The largest cranium (see Table, p. 236), belonging to an old man, had the frontal region well developed, is orthognathic, with upturned nasals, and dolicho-cephalic. The occipital protuberance, or probole, is small. The bones of the extremity imply a stature of not less than five foot eleven inches for the man; the femur is carinate, and the tibiæ platycnemic (see Fig. 48). _The Cave of Lombrive._