Six humeri and one tibia of the raven were found in the cave.
The only remains of a predaceous bird met with were those of the sea-eagle (Haliaëtus albicilla). It is a very widely spread bird, and is found in the whole of Europe, in a great part of Asia, and in all the rivers of North and West Africa. One or two bones of the feet are all we have to prove its existence.
We may probably consider as chance introductions into the cave, a number of vertebræ and pieces of the skull of probably the common snake, and bones of the shrew mouse and the frog.[1]
Such is a rapid review of the Thayngen fauna at the time when the Kesslerloch was inhabited by man; for general reference I will add a table of the representatives of the animal world found here, with a note as to their number, and also as to the direction in which they have retreated from the neighbourhood of Thayngen.
Immediately after the foregoing sketch had been printed, two pieces of bone were found amongst the rubbish; one of them was that of a bison; the other probably belonged to a rhinoceros. On the first is scratched or engraved the figure of a fox; and on the second that of a bear. Both figures are drawn sitting, and from being represented so naturally, form a fitting appendage to the reindeer and the horse. The mode, however, in which the work is carried out betrays the hand of an unpractised artist, for these drawings want the nicety and correctness which the others possess in the highest degree.—See Plate XV., figs. 98 and 99.
Even a superficial glance at this list of animals is sufficient for the conviction that the fauna of those ages was totally different from that of the present day. Nowhere else in the whole world do we find the remains of these animals so associated together. Some of them, such as the cave-lion, the mammoth, the rhinoceros, and the Bos primigenius, have long since disappeared from the earth's surface; for it is clear that they had on the one hand to struggle for existence with the human race, which was far superior to them in intelligence and cunning, and on the other they had to succumb to the changes of climate. For all these animals, with perhaps a single
- ↑ Professor Rütimeyer seems to consider the bones of the snake and of the shrew-mouse to be late introductions by chance into the cave, and he says that probably the same ought to be said of the European fox, on account of the very great rarity of its remains.—Veränderungen, &c. page 44.
