The rivers have even in some cases, as the Sioule, near Chalucet, cut through not only the basalt which dispossessed them of their ancient channels, but have actually eaten 50 feet into the subjacent gneiss; yet the cone, an incoherent heap of scoriae and spongy ejectamenta, stands unmolested. Had the waters once risen, even for a day, so high as to reach the level of the base of one of these cones--had there been a single flood 50 or 60 feet in height since the last eruption occurred, a great part of these volcanoes must inevitably have been swept away as readily as all traces of the layer of cinders; and the accompanying bones would have been obliterated by the Rodes near Aurignac, had it risen, since the days of the mammoth, rhinoceros, and cave-bear, 50 feet above its present level. The Aurignac cave adds no new species to the list of extinct quadrupeds, which we have elsewhere, and by independent evidence, ascertained to have once flourished contemporaneously with Man. But if the fossil memorials have been correctly interpreted--if we have here before us at the northern base of the Pyrenees a sepulchral vault with skeletons of human beings, consigned by friends and relatives to their last resting-place--if we have also at the portal of the tomb the relics of funeral feasts, and within it indications of viands destined for the use of the departed on their way to a land of spirits; while among the funeral gifts are weapons wherewith in other fields to chase the gigantic deer, the cave-lion, the cave-bear, and woolly rhinoceros--we have at last succeeded in tracing back the sacred rites of burial, and, more interesting still, a belief in a future state, to times long anterior to those of history and tradition. Rude and superstitious as may have been the savage of that remote era, he still deserved, by cherishing hopes of a hereafter, the epithet of "noble," which Dryden gave to what he seems to have pictured to himself as the primitive condition of our race, "as Nature first made Man When wild in woods the noble savage ran."* (* "Siege of Granada" Part 1 Act 1 Scene 1.) CHAPTER 11. -- AGE OF HUMAN FOSSILS OF LE PUY IN CENTRAL FRANCE AND OF NATCHEZ ON THE MISSISSIPPI DISCUSSED. Question as to the Authenticity of the Fossil Man of Denise, near Le Puy-en-Velay, considered. Antiquity of the Human Race implied by that Fossil. Successive Periods of Volcanic Action in Central France. With what Changes in the Mammalian Fauna they correspond. The Elephas meridionalis anterior in Time to the Implement-bearing Gravel of St. Acheul. Authenticity of the Human Fossil of Natchez on the Mississippi discussed. The Natchez Deposit, containing Bones of Mastodon and Megalonyx, probably not older than the Flint Implements of St. Acheul.