EECENT AllCHJiOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES. 533 



nothing to the already formed convictions on the co-existence of 

 man with the fossil elephant (U. primigenius), and the other great 

 Herbivora or Carnivora considered by geologists as having lived 

 during the first phases of the quaternary period. The truth of this 

 retrospective evidence is now deducible from so great a number of 

 corresponding observations, and from material facts of so manifest a 

 signification, that even minds the least prepared to admit it, no longer 

 hesitate to accept it in all its reality, from the moment that they -will 

 take the trouble to see for themselves and afterv/ards to judge con- 

 scientiously. 



" Permit me. Sir, to profit by this occasion, in order to beg you to 

 announce to the Academy two discoveries of a more actual bearing 

 upon my studies on the geographical distribution of the quaternary 

 Mammifers. First, the observation of a Marmot, of a species new, 

 or at any rate different from that of the Alps, the remains of which 

 have been found in a Dordogne cave anciently inhabited by man. 



" The other, and more important fact, consists in the finding in 

 Perigord, at another place of human abode of great antiquity, a cer- 

 tain number of bones of the Ovibos moscliatus, or Musk Ox, in a 

 fragmentary condition analogous to that of other bones of the 

 animals upon which the primitive inhabitants lived. These bones of 

 the musk ox were found associated with the remains of the great 

 bear, the cave Hon (Fells spelcea), the reindeer, the aurochs, the horse, 

 &c., and in the midst of the relics of human industry; thus showing the 

 persistence of a glacial epoch up to the time when man established him- 

 self in this European region of which the climate is now so temperate. 

 "We know in fact that the musk ox, now banished to North America, 

 never comes lower than 60 deg. ; during the first part of the qua- 

 ternary period, then, this animal existed 15 deg. further south. It is 

 worthy of remark that M. Alphonse Milne-Edwards arrives at similar 

 conclusions, from the studies he has made of fossil birds from the 

 caves and other human stations in Perigord."* 



M. le Marquis de Vibraye has since recorded a similar discovery 

 made at I'Augerie in the Dordogne. 



* See proceedings of the Societe Philomathique, meeting of the 8th July re- 

 ported in " L'Institut", number 3, August, 1856. 



