BONE IMPLEMENTS. 331 



many and double barbs, cut with wonderful vigour ; and 

 lastly, eyed needles of compact bone finely pointed, polished 

 and drilled with round eyes, so small and regular that some 

 of the most assured and acute believers in all the other find- 

 ings might well doubt whether they could indeed have been 

 drilled with stone, until their repetition by the hand of that 

 practical and conscientious observer, Monsieur Lartet, by the 

 very stone implements found with them, has dispelled their 

 honest doubts."* Moreover, we must remember that the 

 New Zealanders were able with their stone tools to drill holes 

 even through glass.-)- No pottery has yet been found in these 

 caves. 



So far, then (with the exception, perhaps, of the well- worked 

 lance-heads of Laugerie and Badegoule), all the evidence we 

 have yet obtained from these caves points to a very primitive 

 period, earlier even than that of the first Swiss lake villages, 

 or Danish shell-mounds. 



But there is one class of objects in these caves which, taken 

 alone, would have led us to a very different conclusion. No 

 representation, however rude, of any animal has yet been found 



FIG. 185. 



Drawing of a Fish. 



in any of the Danish shell-mounds, or the Stone Age lake 

 villages. Even on objects of the Bronze Age they are so rare 

 that it is doubtful whether a single well-authenticated instance 

 could be produced. Yet in these archaic bone-caves, many 

 very fair sketches have been found, scratched on bone or 

 stone with a sharp point, probably of a flint implement. In 

 some cases there is even an attempt at shading. In the 

 Annales des Sciences Naturelles,j M. Lartet had already 



* Christy, Trans. Ethn. Soc., N. S. vol. iii. 



t Cook's First Voy. p. 464. 



+ Arm. des Sc. Nat. 1861, vol. xv. 



