domesticated, was an important article of diet, and was supplemented
by the aurochs, the stag, the chamois, the wild goat, the boar, the
bare, and failing them, the wolf, the fox, and above all the reindeer,
which multiplied rapidly in districts suitable to it. The elephant
bones picked up on Mount Dol and elsewhere are nearly all those of
young animals; and it is probable that they had been killed for food by
man. In the Sureau Cave in Belgium,[49] in that of Aurignac in France,
and Brixham in England, have been found complete skeletons of the URSUS
SPELAEUS, which bad evidently been dragged in with the flesh still
on them, for all the bones are in their natural position. In other
caves, the thorax and the vertebrae of the skeletons were missing; the
cave-man, having despatched his victim, bad evidently taken only the
more succulent parts into his retreat. Beasts of prey merely gnaw the
comparatively tender and spongy tops of the bones, leaving the hard,
compact parts untouched. In the caves that were inhabited by man,
however, we find the apophyses neglected, whilst the diaphyses are
split open. We cannot, therefore, make any mistake on this point,
or attribute to the beast of prey what is certainly the work of man.

Whilst he evidently preferred to hunt and eat the larger mammals,
man when pressed by hunger did not despise the small rodents, which
were, of course, more easily captured. Amongst piles of the bones of
horses and stags have been found the remains of martens, hedgehogs,
and mice; and from the Thayngen Cave have been taken the bones of more
than five hundred bares. In Belgium the water-rat seems to have been
considered a dainty, and in the Chaleux Cave alone were found more
than twenty pounds' weight of the bones of this creature, nearly all
bearing traces of having been subjected to the action of fire.

The remains of birds are rarer, and Broca has remarked that the most