BY THE PRESIDENT. 193 



his discoveries to a certain extent by the late Dr. Buckland. But 

 in late years a vast number of these caves have been explored, and 

 they throw a great amount of light on the character of the inhabi- 

 tants of Europe at the period when they were occupied. "We find 

 that in the south of France men were in the habit of living, not 

 so much in actual caves, as in shelters below rocks — that they fed 

 on reindeer, which have now disappeared from that part of the 

 globe, on horses to a certain extent, and oxen and deer, whose 

 bones we. find broken up ; and mixed with these bones, the instru- 

 ments of which they made use. They seem to have been, like the 

 Esquimaux, devotedly attached to marrow, for almost every bone 

 is smashed. In the hammers with which they smashed the bones, 

 the flint tools with which they fashioned their harpoons and other 

 instruments made from the horns of the reindeer, the stone=!, heated 

 probably for boiling water, we find the whole histoiy of their 

 method of life. I have brought here a few arrow-heads, lance- 

 heads, and deer-horn harpoons, round-ended instruments known as 

 scrapers, and one or two other objects. "With regard to the scrapers, 

 it is curious that in the present century the Esquimaux were using 

 similar instruments as planes for working wood, and sometimes as 

 scrapers for the inner side of skins. But not only have we the in- 

 struments with which the Cave-dwellers prepared their leather, 

 but the needles with which they sewed the. skins together. You 

 will see that the needles are not quite so fine as our own, but still 

 very fine when you consider that they were made by means of 

 flint tools only. The late Dr. Falconer tried to make some bone 

 needles like them without the present modem appKances, using 

 only flint tools, and he succeeded perfectly. In one corner of the 

 case before you, you will see a piece of haematite, or iron ore, of a 

 reddish colour, which has been scraped. There is very little doubt 

 that at that time the savages were given to ornament and colour 

 very much in the same manner as at the present day, and the red 

 stone was used to produce paint. They may even have put on war 

 paint when going into battle. The caves seem to vary considerably 

 in age ; but any dissertation on their chi-onology would be out of 

 place here, I will, therefore, not trouble you beyond saying that 

 in all probability there were four successive ages of caves, and the 

 tools found in the earliest of these approximate most nearly in 

 form to those found in the river gravels. By way of illustrating 

 the great distinction in time there must have been between the 

 period of the cavern people, when reindeer formed the staple article 

 of food, and the more recent Ifeolithic Period, I may mention that 

 in the neighbourhood of the Swiss Lakes, where so many articles 



VOL. I. — PT. VII. 15 



