Page:Prehistoric Britain.djvu/67

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DISCOVERIES IN BELGIUM
59

times—M. Dupont assigned to the period now in progress, when only the fauna of Neolithic times are met with, the reindeer having also vanished from the locality. The sepulchral remains of an extremely brachycephalic race were found in the Trou du Frontal, and associated with them were fragments of pottery, both of which must be assigned to Neolithic races, who also haunted these retreats (see Chap. X, p. 242).

In addition to the cave relics there is in the Brussels Museum another collection of roughly chipped flints from Mesvin, near Mons. These were found in a gravelly stratum resting immediately over tertiary deposits, but below two distinct beds of mud (limon). The special interest attached to them lies in the fact that in the same stratum were found remains of the following Quaternary fauna, viz. mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, cave-bear, cave-lion, Irish elk, reindeer, bison, horse and snails (Helix ericetorum). Neither of the two earlier elephants nor the hippopotamus appears to have been represented (Congrès d'Anthropologie et d'Archéologie préhistoriques, 1872, p. 265).

M. A. Rutot, Conservator of the Royal Museum of Natural History in Brussels, a distinguished geologist and a militant advocate of the theory that "eoliths" are human implements, has propounded a new system of classification which aims at proving, by various sections, especially one at Helin in the valley of the Lys, that the Chelléen epoch is