# Excavations at the Kesslerloch/Appendix

APPENDIX.
I. NOTE ON PLATE XV. FIGS. 98 and 99.
So far Professor Rütimeyer: it will be seen that both he and also Dr. Keller accept these drawings as genuine. I am quite aware that it is a very serious matter even to doubt the verdict of such veterans of archæology; still it appears to me that, honestly, I ought here to give the singular history attached to them as it came to my knowledge when in Switzerland. During the progress of the excavation at the Kesslerloch the earth and stones were, as mentioned in the report, sifted in order to find the antiquities; the refuse was thrown aside, and in the process of the excavation became a considerable heap. After the excavation was finished, Mr. J. Messikomer, the well-known explorer of the lake-dwelling of Robenhausen, believed that a more careful sifting of the heap would bring to light many things which had escaped the earlier examination. He therefore obtained permission from the owner of the soil to sift the mass again; and the result was an abundant harvest of flint-flakes and bones of the reindeer, horse, Alpine hare, &c. Many of these are now in my possession. But unfortunately he employed for a stated period a labourer of the district, and when this period was expired, the man so employed says that he went to the heap on his own account, and discovered these two etchings of the bear and the fox! Those who are accustomed to the laws of evidence must decide, in the first place, whether the man committed any breach of honour or honesty, and in the next whether these etchings are genuine, or were made for the occasion. I do not venture to express a decided opinion, but I cannot help mentioning, on the one hand, that the style of the drawings is totally different from that of the other etchings; and on the other (and this appears rather a strong argument), the lines or furrows in the drawing of the bear have within them the ridge-like longitudinal projections, exactly like those on the plane surface, which have hitherto been attributed to weathering. It has been said that if a modern etching on bone is made when it is wet, this appearance would result; but having tried this plan on a piece of prehistoric bone from Bacon Hole, after it had been well soaked, and a copy of one of the doubtful specimens etched, with a Kesserloch flint, the lines engraved remained when dry perfectly sharp and clear, and there was no appearance within the furrows of the longitudinal fibrous appearance above referred to. The reader has now before him all the evidence which I can give on both sides, and he must judge for himself.
II. GLACIAL PERIOD.
It would be quite out of place here to give anything like a dissertation on this subject. It cannot, however, be wrong to state one or two facts which in a measure bear on the discoveries of the Kesslerloch. Although the Glacial period after the Tertiary is acknowledged by all thinking persona, yet every additional fact brought to light strengthens the theory—if in fact it can be now called by this name. The evidence of an Arctic or reindeer period in France is given so clearly in the valuable work called 'Reliquiæ Aquitanicæ,' that no one can gainsay it, and it is needless to refer to a volume of such standing; two other cases, one in Switzerland and the other in South Germany, may not be so well known.
In a hamlet called Schwerzenbach, which is reached by railway in about half an hour from Zürich, on the line to Wetzikon, there is a section of great interest, to which I was directed by Dr. Keller and guided by Mr. Jacob Messikomer. Here, on the banks of a small lake, and under a covering of about three feet of regular peat, there was a bed of about the same thickness of loam, and in this loam there were numerous leaves said to be of glacial age. The water unfortunately came in upon us when we dug towards the bottom of the loam, so that we could not reach the base nor ascertain what was below it, but Mr. Messikomer told me that it was what he called 'diluvium.' The loam bed is said to extend completely under the little lake. The leaves in the loam were in tolerable abundance, and apparently in fair preservation, and we brought away some masses of the clay, intending, if the specimens, after being soaked and dried, turned out well, to give a separate plate of them in the present volume. Unfortunately, however, when brought to England and soaked in water, no specimen worthy of being drawn could be secured. But the reader will have much better authority than a plate in the following extract from Professor Heer's Life of Arnold Escher Von der Linth, p. 261.
'A year ago a young Swedish geologist, Mr. Nathorst, discovered in the glacial clay of different parts of Sweden and Denmark a number of plants belonging to the extreme north, but which at that period must have lived in those districts, though at present they are only found in North Lapland and Spitzbergen. Mr. Nathorst last autumn came to Switzerland, to seek for this northern flora here, and he succeeded in finding it at Schwerzenbach, in the Canton of Zürich, in a bed of loam under a deposit of peat. With the assistance of Dr. Ferdinand Keller, who aided him by his rich fund of experience, masses of this loam under the peat were dug out and brought to Zürich; and in it were found seven species of Arctic plants. They were, Betula nana, Salix polaris, Salix retusa, Salix reticulata, Arctostaphylos uva ursi, Polygonum viviparum, and Dryas octopetala. All these are species which belong to the far north, and, with the exception of the polar willow, live also in our Alps. The Polygonum and the Dryas are very plentiful at the foot of the glaciers, and the Arctostaphylos ​and Salix retusa and S. reticulata are not uncommon there, while the Betula nana prefers the peat moors. These plants evidently have descended from those which flourished at a time when the glaciers were retreating, and had formed tarns and small lakes like those of St. Gotthard. Like these the tarns were surrounded by an Alpine flora, the remains of which fell into the mud, and have been preserved to our own days. . . . In the 'Urwelt der Schweiz,' p. 534, &c., I have endeavoured to show that at the Glacial age the Alpine flora very probably occupied the plain land of Switzerland, so far as it was free from glaciers, and that the Alpine plants which we now see insulated on the mountain chains of Northern Switzerland may be the last remains of this ancient flora—the lost children of the Alps surrounded entirely by the inhabitants of the plain. This has now been confirmed by fresh discoveries, and doubtless further investigation will bring to light new facts, which will reveal to us clearly the plants and fauna of the Glacial age. But they hare also in a most surprising manner confirmed another supposition, namely, that which considers our Alpine flora to have had its origin in the far north. Not only all the species which have as yet been found in the glacier mud have their home in the north, but amongst them is found the polar willow, which at the present day is only found in the Arctic zone (in North Lapland and Spitzbergen), but it is entirely wanting in the Alps. So that this species has come from the north into our districts, but here became extinct; while its companions have survived on the Alps up to the present day, and now are separated from their fellow species in the far north by a great extent of country.'
The young Swedish geologist above referred to, Mr. Nathorst afterwards visited Devonshire, in order to examine the Bovey deposits. He was delighted to find the Betula nana in the upper or white beds there. He is, I believe, the son of a Swedish professor, and is a very energetic naturalist; he mentioned that on his Spitzbergen expedition he had been three months without once having on dry clothes, and this had brought on total deafness. In this state he undertook and accomplished the journey to Switzerland and England to investigate these glacial plants.
More information as to the Bovey formations can be obtained in a paper on the lignite formation of Bovey by W. Pengelly, F.R.S., F.G.S., &c, and Professor Heer, printed in the 'Philosophical Transactions for 1863,' to which the reader is referred. At p. 26 (in the separate copies) will be found a note on the plants of the white clay or top beds, and these particulars are repeated, but somewhat more fully, in a note by Professor Heer in his Life of Escher, p. 279. He says, 'The white clay covering the lignite is of a totally different age from it. When the white clay was deposited Betula nana and some species of willow were living there, and their leaves have been preserved in this deposit. But Betula nana at the present day is not to be found in England, though it occurs on the Scotch mountains, and is very common in the Arctic zone. At the age of the glaciers it was also living in the south of Sweden, in Denmark, and on the plain-land of Switzerland, where its remains have been found together with those of other Arctic plants in the deposits of this period. So that there can be no doubt that at that time Devonshire had a colder ​climate than at present, and that when the temperature changed it was forced back to the Scotch mountains.
The young Swedish naturalist and his discoveries hare led us away from Mid-Europe, and we must now return for a few moments to a locality in Upper Swabia, north of the Lake of Constance, as discoveries of the reindeer age were made there some years ago which throw considerable light on the contents of the Kesslerloch. They were fully described by Professor Fraas in the 'Württembergische naturwissenschäftliche Jahreshefte' for 1867, and a somewhat shorter notice of them, also by Professor Fraas, was given translated into English in the 'Geological Magazine' for 1866, p. 546. The reader is therefore referred to these two accounts; but it may perhaps be well to mention a very few facts respecting the place. Schussenried is a small hamlet to the south of the rise forming the watershed in South Germany to the north and the south: the streams on the south running into the Rhine, those on the north into the Danube. Under a considerable depth of peat near this village there was a bed, of four or five feet thick, of what Professor Fraas calls tufa sand, or loose tufa, beneath which was the relic-bed, also four or five feet thick, containing a very large quantity of reindeer-horns, and of tools and implements made from them, also of flint and stone implements. One of the reindeer-horns has upon its palm certain indefinite etchings, but by no means distinct enough to be called a drawing. This was shown to me by Professor Fraas when at Stuttgard on my return from Switzerland. It is somewhat singular that almost everything, whether needle or scraper or any other tool, found here was either broken or unfinished, so that it appears as if this accumulation had been merely a rubbish-heap of rejected implements. Together with these there were several species of Hypnum, which, according to Professor Schimper of Strassburg, who has paid much attention to mosses, consist entirely of northern or high Alpine forms. It will be seen that the objects found at Schussenried bear a great similarity to those from the Kesslerloch.
Sufficient has now been said to show that an Arctic climate at one time extended not merely over a great part of France, but also over Middle Europe. It appears to me that only those who are resolved not to be convinced can doubt the evidence of Aquitaine, of Thayngen, and of Sohussenried.
* ↑ The cuts given here are copies of those in Professor Rütimeyer's book by the new 'Banks' process.
* ↑ I cannot resist copying here a few lines from an interesting volume just published by Miss Isabella L. Bird, called Six Months amongst the Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, and Volcanos of the Sandwich Islands. She is giving an account of her ascent of the volcanic mountain in Hawaii, Mauna Kea, 13,953 feet above the sea. After leaving the summit, she came to 'a cave, a lava-bubble, in which the natives used to live when they came up here to quarry a very hard adjacent phonolite for their axes and other tools.' She says, 'I was glad to make it a refuge from the piercing wind. Hundreds of unfinished axes lie round the cave entrance, and there is quite a large mound of unfinished chips. This is a very interesting spot to Hawaiian antiquaries. They argue from the amount of the chippings that this mass of phonolite was quarried for ages by countless generations of men, and that the mountain top must have been upheaved, and the island inhabited in a very remote past. The stones have not been worked since Capt. Cook's day.'—pp. 351, 352. May not this account throw some light on what are called by antiquaries 'rubbish-heaps' of implements?