rather to the age of the lake-dwellings than to that of the reindeer—an opinion which was accepted by M. Chantre at the time.
In 1873 Chantre submitted the skull to Paul Broca, at the meeting of the French Association then held at Lyons, and he pronounced it to be of the Magdalénien epoch, and dolichocephalic.
M. Hamy writes as follows about it:—
"Voici le crâne dont j'ai parlé et qui m'a été confié par M. Chantre. Il est dolichocéphale et remonte a l'époque de la pierre-polie. Je ne crois pas que ce soit un crâne celtique. J'en ferai l'examen dans la premiere stance." (Bull. de la Soc. l'Anth. de Paris, 1868, p. 599.)
Such being the discordant views held about the Béthenas skull, M. Jean Jarricot, Secretary of the Anthropological Society of Lyons, has reinvestigated the whole matter (ibid., 1908, pp. 103-139), and finds, after an elaborate series of comparative measurements, that it comes anatomically nearest to that of Chancelade, the cephalic index of which, according to Testut, was 72.02, while that of Béthenas was found by Jarricot to be 77.24.
The essence of M. Jarricot's results may be thus stated:—
(1) The circumstances in which the skull was found do not permit of assigning it to any definite epoch.
(2) Its osteological characters show that it is allied, on the one hand to Palæolithic, and on the other to Neolithic races.
Cavern of Freudenthal
The cavern of Freudenthal, near Schaffhausen, excavated by Dr H. Karsten in 1874, has yielded a number of human bones; but they are so broken and decayed that a description of them would be of no archæological value. They consist of:— (1) a fragment of the parietal bone. (2) The lower jaw of a person of about 16 to 19 years of age. (3) Fragments of skulls, mandibles, and pelvis. These were found in a bed of brown loam in association with remains of reindeer, cave-bear, brown bear, horse, and mammoth. No representations of animals are recorded from the station, but the ordinary relics of Magdalénien types were in abundance. (Bull. Soc. l'Anth., 1907, p. 211.)
