374 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1896. 



sometimes of etchings or engravings on stone, bone, or horn. If on 

 wood, such specimens have decayed or been otherwise lost. Bone, 

 horn, and ivory became known during tliis epoch, and were now first 

 employed by man for testhetic and decorative purposes as well as for 

 utility. 



Judge E. Piette, one of the most ardent and persistent explorers of 

 the prehistoric stations of France, confining his investigations largely 

 to the grottoes, caverns, and rock shelters belonging to the Paleolithic 

 period, having spent twenty-five years in this pursuit, has made dis- 

 coveries and formulated theories with regard to the arts and industries 

 of the early prehistoric man in that country that are entitled to serious 

 consideration. 



He awards the fullest credit to the investigations of Lartet and 

 Christy, of Vibraye, Franchet, Garrigou, and others. He admits the 

 discovery of three types of human industry as found in the caverns of 

 Le Moustier, Laugerie Haute, and Madelaine, and eulogizes De Mortillet 

 for his creation of the A rcheo Ethnologic science, or as De Mortillet 

 himself puts it, Palethnology. 



Judge Piette concedes the importance of the discoveries and studies 

 of these leaders, and joins their followers, now comprising all the 

 students of the science in France and nearly all in Europe, and the rest 

 of the world, in the belief now universally accepted that man occupied 

 western Europe contemporaneously with the great mammals of the 

 prior geologic epoch, now extinct, such as the three species of elephant, 

 the cave bear, Irish elk, and Rhinoceros mtrcMl and ticliorinuH. 



The early explorers were so elated with the discovery of the many 

 evidences of this early existence of man that they were apparently con- 

 tent to note only the differences in the objects of his art and industry 

 found in the different caverns. Judge Piette pushed his investigations 

 another step and sought to discover stratigraphic differences in every 

 cavern explored. In this task he has been eminently successful, and 

 has traced through the various strata of the different caverns the origin 

 of human art and industry, its evolution, apogee, transformations, 

 decline, and sometimes its disappearance. Out of all this he has, while 

 adhering generally to the classification of De Mortillet, made some 

 changes and given new names. He doubts if the origin of man or his 

 first ai)pearance as man is accounted for in De Mortillet's classitica- 

 tion. So he gives to his earliest term the name of '■'■passage,''^ associat- 

 ing man with the Elephas antiquus, U. meridionaHs, E. primigenius, 

 and a pliocene fauna. His (Jhelh'*en epoch has the same fauna, with a 

 predominance of ^^ep/trts antiquus, and all this he declares to have been 

 preglacial. 



His next grand division includes the Glacial epoch with the divisions 

 of Mousterien, wherein man was associated with the Elephas primi- 

 genius, Rhinoceros tichorhinus and Ursus spekvus. This comprises the 

 art and industry of the same epoch in de Mortillet's classification. 



