SCIENTIFIC LABORS OF EDWARD LARTET. 181 



period," he says, " which is regarded by many as a sudden and violent 

 transition from geological to ])resent times has probably witnessed the 

 development of millions of successive generations of the mammals 

 which now inhabit Europe, and the day may not be far distant when 

 the word cataclysm will be expelled from the vocabulary ot i^ositive 

 geology." 



This theory in opposition to the great effect of cataclysms upon the 

 existence of species was elaborated and supported by incontestable facts 

 in ^' some rojiarls upon the geological antiquity of the humem species, in 

 Southern Europe,'''' addressed by M. Lartet to the Academy in 1800, and 

 printed in the BihUotheque do Geneve. 



In regard to the discoveries of M. Boucher des Perthes, then greatly 

 contested, M Lartet considered that all doubt w^ould be dissipated if 

 traces of human action could be found upon the bones of the animals 

 exhumed at the quartz works. He then sought for the quaternary 

 bones described or mentioned by Cuvier, and found upon them very 

 evident traces of the action of flint instruments. 



The human race who worked the quartz of Amiens inhabited Eng- 

 land and France were the same. The two countries were then united; 

 their separation did not take place until after the deposit of the diluvial 

 banks. Alter that event no great catastrophe occurred in Europe; 

 the water courses may have been more rapid, but they did not overflow 

 the limits of their present hydrographic basins. A dozen mammals, 

 more or less, disajipeared by gradual and successive extinction, and the 

 greater part of the terrestrial population passed through the ordinary 

 supposed changes of this long quaternary period. 



From 1800 M. Lartet was almost exclusively employed in the caves, 

 and we are indebted to him for interesting descriptions of Aurignac, of 

 the Madeleine, of Laugerie, of the Eyzies, of Bruuiquelj and of several 

 other celebrated localities. It is difiicult to give in a limited space an 

 idea of the various matters discussed by M. Lartet in regard to these 

 caves; questions which belong to ethnology, anthropology, i)rimitive in- 

 dustry and even historj' ; but I cannot pass over in silence the oppor- 

 tune intervention of paleontology in the chronological classification of 

 the caves. 



In looking over the list of the great quaternary mammals, it will be 

 seen that eight or nine extinct or emigrated species have been found 

 among the remains of the caves. Some of these have never been met 

 with except in the lowest strata of these caves, where they have been 

 succeeded by several zoological generations, while their presence in the 

 oldest diluvium equally attests their age. Several successive periods 

 may thus be distinguished during the time of the caves. 



For instance, the Ursus spelceus seems to have appeared the earliest, 

 and to have become extinct before the animals associated with it. The 

 Elephas primigenius and its faithful companion, the Ehinoceros tichorhi- 

 nus, are found in the diluvium, but are wanting in the peat, the kitchen 



