i897. NOTES AND COMMENTS. 219 



Menelik's Library. 



The above-mentioned mission to Abyssinia might well be recom- 

 mended to make enquiries into the library of Menelik. We learn from 

 La Naturaleza, Madrid, that, at the time of the Mohammedan invasion 

 of Ethiopia in the i6th century, the Abyssinians placed all their 

 Ethiopian manuscripts in Debra-Sina, one of the islands on Lake 

 Zonay, and here they remained carefully guarded by the inhabitants, 

 who looked upon the books as tutelary deities. Not long ago the 

 Negus sent an expedition to conquer these holy islands, and has built 

 in his capital, Addis-Ababa, a library for the reception of the manu- 

 scripts thus recovered. In ancient times Ethiopia was a great centre 

 of learning, and some of these manuscripts have doubtless extreme 

 value. 



The Shell-ornaments of the Mas d'Azil Scholars. 



Our readers will remember those still more ancient manuscripts, 

 painted on stones discovered in the cave of Mas d'Azil by Mr. 

 Piette, an account of whose researches was given by Professor 

 Haddon in Natural Science (vol x, p 33, January, 1897). The 

 shells collected from the various levels in that cave have been 

 studied by Mr. H. Fischer, son of the lamented malacologist, 

 P. Fischer, and in U Anthropologic (vol. vii, pp. 633-652) he describes 

 and figures several, some of them ornamented by man. 



With the exception of three species, Helix nemoralis, H. hortensis, 

 and Unio littomlis, which appear to have been introduced as food, the 

 remanie and marine species seem all to have been used for purposes 

 of adornment, and have been perforated. The perforation has been 

 effected sometimes rudely as though with a stone hammer, sometimes 

 apparently by punching ; at others the process has been facilitated by 

 grinding in the first instance or filing a notch with a chipped flint, 

 whilst fossil shells have been treated equally "with the recent. 



Mr. Fischer takes the successive layers and gives hsts of their 

 shelly contents ; he finds the prevailing species to vary in each bed, 

 and his results are summarised as follows : — The summit of the 

 Pleistocene is characterised by the predominance of Pecten. During 

 the succeeding reindeer period Turritella communis, Littorina littoralis, 

 and Littonna littorea were abundant, the two last species indicating 

 exchanges with the oceanic seaboard. lu the bed with coloured 

 pebbles were considerable numbers of Trivia europcea and Cyclonassa 

 neritea. Finally Dentalium tayentinum, Unio littoralis, and species of Helix 

 predominated in the layers of shells and of axes. The fossils, which 

 were much appreciated during the earlier periods, seem to have been 

 neglected during the later. 



Some of the species found are now confined to the Atlantic sea- 

 board, and unless examples were, as Mr. Fischer speculates, still 

 living in those days in the Mediterranean, near the shores of which 



they have been found fossil, they must have been brought from the 



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