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Here with fossil shells of living species are mingled the bones of Elephas primigenius and E. antiquus, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, Hippopotamus, Felis spelaea, Hyaena spelaea, reindeer, and many others, the bones accompanying the flint implements in such a manner as to show that both were buried in the old alluvium at the same period.
Some of the flint tools in the gravel of Abbeville have their angles very perfect, others have been much triturated, as if in the bed of the main river or some of its tributaries. The mammalia most frequently cited as having been found in the deposits Numbers 2 and 3 at Menchecourt, are the following: Elephas primigenius. Rhinoceros tichorhinus. Equus fossilis, Owen. Bos primigenius.
But would he really have had the courage to say that a Rhinoceros tichorhinus, for instance, "was produced without parents;" or was "evolved from some embryo substance;" or that it suddenly started from the ground like Milton's lion "pawing to get free his hinder parts."
At the same level and in that immediately above it were picked up the remains of the mammoth, the RHINOCEROS TICHORHINUS, the cave bear, and the large cave hyena, the reindeer, and numerous other mammals belonging to the Quaternary fauna.
R. hemitoechus, Falconer, in which the ossification of the septum dividing the nostrils is incomplete in the middle, besides other cranial and dental characters distinguishing it from R. tichorhinus, accompanies Elephas antiquus in most of the oldest British bone-caves, such as Kirkdale, Cefn, Durdham Down, Minchin Hole, and other Gower caverns also found at Clacton, in Essex, and in Northamptonshire.
In other words, they were subsequent to the last great physical changes of Europe, and were contemporaries of the urus and bison, not of the Elephas primigenius, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, and Hyaena spelaea.
With this staff of office were picked up some pieces of ivory covered with geometrical designs, engraved with some sharp implement, stilettos, bone needles, knives, flint scrapers, and, stranger still, the remains of the cave-lion, the cave-hyena, and the RHINOCEROS TICHORHINUS, all contemporaries of the most ancient Quaternary fauna. Staff of office found at Montgaudier.
The mammalia obtained from the bone-earth consisted of Elephas primigenius, or mammoth; Rhinoceros tichorhinus; Ursus spelaeus; Hyaena spelaea; Felis spelaea, or the cave-lion; Cervus tarandus, or the reindeer; a species of horse, ox, and several rodents, and others not yet determined.
But the discovery of most importance, as bearing on the subject of the present work, is the occurrence in a newly-discovered cave, called Long Hole, by Colonel Wood, in 1861, of the remains of two species of rhinoceros, R. tichorhinus and R. hemitoechus, Falconer, in an undisturbed deposit, in the lower part of which were some well-shaped flint knives, evidently of human workmanship.
Sicily once part of Africa. Rise of Bed of the Mediterranean to the Height of three hundred Feet in the Human Period in Sardinia. Burial-place of Pleistocene Date of Aurignac in the South of France. Rhinoceros tichorhinus eaten by Man. M. Lartet on extinct Mammalia and Works of Art found in the Aurignac Cave. Relative Antiquity of the same considered.
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