456 SOME NEW BOOKS [DECEMBER 
A CARBONIFEROUS LANDSCAPE. 
Eine Landschaft der Stemkohlen-Zeit.  Erlaiiterung zu der Wandtafel 
bearbeitet und herausgegeben im auftrage der Direction der Kénigl. 
Preuss. geologischen Landesanstalt und Bergakademie zu Berlin. By 
Dr. H. Potomé. Pp. 40, with 30 figs. and a plate. Leipzig: Born- 
traeger, 1899. Price with the ‘ Tafel,” 25 marks. 
To restore the past is one of the most hazardous of tasks, and many have 
tried it with indifferent results. We have not as yet received the ‘ Wandtafel ” 
referred to above, but if it is in proportion to its size as good as the plate 
accompanying the pamphlet, it must be very good, for Dr. Potomé has put 
brains as well as artistic feeling into his picture. It is based upon plastic 
reconstructions of carboniferous plants, and seems to us so successful that we 
hope eagerly for more to follow. 
L. ANTHROPOLOGIE, Tome x. No. 4. 
L. Anturopoiocigé for July and August contains some articles which will be of 
more than passing interest to those who are following the successive discoveries 
bearing on the prehistoric civilisation of Western Europe. 
(1) Boule and A. Verniére (L’Abri sous roche du Rond prés Saint-Arcons- 
@Allier (Haute Loire)) describe the exploration of the rock-shelter of 
Rond, in the Auvergne district, which has yielded remains characteristic of the 
Reindeer period. Hitherto no stations of this description have been found in 
this part of France, at least that could be so dated from their relics. The 
station of Rond was situated under an overhanging cliff of the voleanic rock so 
common in the locality. Part of the accumulated débris had been previously 
removed, but sufficient remained to give an area of undisturbed strata of some 
12 yards in length by 4 yards in breadth. At some depth in a talus of dis- 
integrated rock and other materials the excavators came upon a black bed of 
ashes and organic matters, 8 inches thick, in which they discovered several 
hearths, some bone and flint implements, and osseous remains of various 
animals, including cave-hyena, reindeer, horse, stag, etc. Both the relics and 
the fauna are regarded by the authors as characteristic of the Reindeer period. 
(2) Dr. Verneau (Les nouvelles trouvailles de M. Abbo dans la Barma- 
Grande) recurs to the much debated age of the prehistoric men of Mentone, 
whose skeletons have, from time to time, been disinterred in the Baoussé- 
Roussé caves, near that town. Since 1892, when three skeletons were dis- 
covered in the Barma-Grande cave, two more have come to light in the same 
cave (1894), both, however, being at a depth of 5 feet less than the former. 
One of these skeletons—1-‘75 in. (about 5 feet 84 in.) in height and strongly 
associated with it a few ornaments of perforated teeth 
and shells. Thus in every respect it closely resembled the three burials dis- 
covered in 1892. The second, though only a few feet distant, showed evidence 
of having been subjected to great heat, as the bones were much carbonised. 
Dr. Verneau observes that the heat was applied to the body im situ, and that 
consequently it lay either on the surface of what was then the floor of the cave 
or in a very superficial trench. In the deposits beneath these skeletons por- 
tions of the lower jaw of a reindeer and some flint implements were found, 
which he assigns to the same chronological horizon as the human remains of 
the later Palaeolithic caves of France. The general conclusion arrived at is, 
that the two groups were contemporary, the three skeletons having been interred 
in deep pits in Palaeolithic débris, while the two upper ones were deposited at 
or near what was then the floor of the cave. On the whole he regards these 

