It was published in January, 1872; and in the summer of that year, no doubt in view of a new edition of the "Antiquity of Man," he went to the south of France, with Lady Lyell and Professor T. M'K. Hughes, to examine the Aurignac cave. Here several human skeletons had been discovered some years before, apparently entombed with the bones of various extinct mammals, such as the cave-bear and lion, the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros--in short, with a fauna characteristic of the palæolithic age. But was this really the date of the interment? Some distinguished geologists were of opinion that, though the cave had been then occupied by wild beasts, its floor had been disturbed, and the corpses buried in neolithic times. On this point Lyell was unable to obtain conclusive evidence, and was obliged to confine himself to a statement of the facts and arguments on either side of the question.[146] Shortly after the publication of this new edition of the "Antiquity of Man" in January, 1873, an unexpected and irreparable bereavement darkened the evening of his days. On April 24th Lady Lyell, the companion and helpmate of forty years, was taken from him after a few days' illness from an inflammatory cold.[147] The shock was the more severe because the loss was so unforeseen. Lady Lyell was twelve years his junior, and had always enjoyed good health[148]--"youthful and vigorous for her age," as he writes--so that he "never contemplated surviving her, and could hardly believe it when the calamity happened." He bore the blow bravely, consoling himself by reflecting that the separation, at his age--nearly seventy-six--could not be for very long, and, as he writes to Professor Heer, of Zürich, endeavouring, "by daily work at my favourite science, to forget as far as possible the dreadful change which this has made in my existence."