——_ 
Soe 
corer 
1866. | of the Two earliest known Races of Men. 339 
which may have been used for mortars or for obtaining fire by fric- 
tion ; sundry ornaments made of bone, antler, and teeth ; a whistle 
made out of the first phalanx of a large stag; arrow-heads, spoons, 
and needles made out of bone or antlers. One of the arrow-heads 
cut out of the antler of a reindeer is remarkable for the alternate 
barbs and for the grooves on their surface, which may have been 
intended to contain poison. An implement from the same cave 
| Plate, Fig. 3], made of the same material, with the barbs on one 
side, was probably a fishing or fowling spear. The most remark- 
able remains, however, by far, are the figures of animals engraved 
upon stone, antler, bone, or ivory, the earliest traces of sculpture 
known in Western Europe. A slab of schist from Les Eyzies bears 
the outline of a deer; the lines, however, are too confused for spe- 
cific identification. The rock-shelter of Laugerie-basse has furnished 
an outline of the hinder quarters of a large ox, boldly and skilfully 
engraved on the palmated antler of a remdeer. On a second frag- 
ment of reindeer antler the ancient artist has depicted the figure of 
a horned ruminant, probably the Bouquetin, of which the remains 
were abundant, and as he had no room to draw the hindlegs in their 
natural position, he doubled them forwards until the hoofs touched 
the animal’s belly, and thus completed the whole beast.  [-Plate, 
Fig. 7.| Other fragments of antler from the same locality were 
fashioned into ornamented spoons or marrow-scoops; and in one 
case, a reindeer kneeling on his fore-legs, with eyes, ears, antlers, 
and tail most distinctly cut, formed the handle of an implement of 
some kind. 
From the rock-shelter of La Madelaine has been obtained most 
remarkable and unlooked-for evidence of the co-existence of man 
with the mammoth in a fragment of fossil ivory | Plate, Fig. 8], 
bearmg upon it the well-defined figure of the extinct species of 
Elephant to which it belonged.* The artist has given to it not 
only the tusks with eccentric curvature, which are so common in 
the drift gravels, but also has marked in a most unmistakable way 
the long hairy mane which we know, from the discovery of the 
frozen mammoth carcases in the North of Russia, characterized that 
extinct animal. This specimen, therefore, is most important, not 
only as an example of the early dawn of art, but also because it 
stamps the age of the artist to have been that of the Mammoth. 
Human teeth and bones were also found in both the caves and 
rock-shelters, which were in precisely the same state of preservation 
as the bones of the animals which had been used for food, and pro- 
bably owe their presence to the same want of care for the dead 
among the Reindeer Folk as is now exhibited by the Esquimaux. 
M. Lartet, however, hesitates to relegate the human remains to the 
age of the Reindeer: “ D’abord parce qu'il est peu vraisemblable que 
les aborigénes de cet Age, que nous avons pu voir dans une station 
* © Ann. des Sciences Naturelles.’ 5° ser., t. iv., 6 cahier. 
