G. GENERAL- NATUKAL HISTORY AND ZOOLOGY. 335 



REPRESENTATIONS OF ANIMALS ON BONE AND HORN BY MEN 



OF THE REINDEER PERIOD. 



Great interest is attached by archaeologists to the repre- 

 sentations of animals by men of the reindeer period of France, 

 as executed upon bone plates of reindeer horn, etc., and the 

 publication of the design representing unmistakably the hairy 

 mammoth, or fossil elephant, not long since attracted univer- 

 sal attention. More recently other figures of the same char- 

 acter have been published, in an article by M. Louis Lartet 

 upon some specimens belonging to the collection of his father, 

 M. Edward Lartet. This consists of two sketches of the 

 fossil elephant, made on either side of a polished plate of 

 bone, showing unmistakably the trunk, tusks, and other char- 

 acteristics ; and as the two figures were in different attitudes, 

 it would seem that they were probably representations of the 

 same individual. 



M. Lartet sums up all the figures of prehistoric carvings 

 known to him of the fossil elephant, remarking that the first 

 one discovered was on a plate of ivory taken from the cave 

 of La Madelaine, in Perigord. A second was found at 

 Laugerie - Basse, in Perigord, and a third specimen, from 

 Bruniquel, is a little more doubtful as to its identification. 

 M. Lartet in the same article reproduces an engraving of 

 what he supposes to be a glutton or wolverine. 20 B, 1874, 

 33. 



ORIGIN OF THE HORNS OF THE DEER. 



The origin of the horns of the deer has recently been ac- 

 counted for, especially in respect to the peculiar periodicity 

 of their growth and subsequent shedding. It is well known 

 that during the early winter male deer are hornless, but to- 

 ward spring the tissues at certain points of the frontal bones 

 thicken, and the enlarged arteries bring additional nutritive 

 material, especially phosphate of lime, for the construction 

 of horns. These grow so rapidly that horns weighing as 

 much as seventy-two pounds have been produced in ten 

 weeks. The lowest types of deer now living have un- 

 branched horns, but shed them like the others. Some years 

 ago there was discovered in the upper miocene beds of France 

 an animal which misfht have been a deer but for the fact 



