1868.] 3 ae cea, 
2. ARCHAZOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY. 
M. Pavt Gervais has recently published an important work, en- 
titled “Recherches sur lAncienneté de ’Homme et la Période 
Quaternaire,” illustrated by nineteen quarto plates of figures of 
implements, ornaments, human bones and skulls, and mammalian 
remains, from various caves and stratified deposits of the Quaternary 
period. The scope of this work is very comprehensive, as the 
author treats the subject from several points of view. After certain 
preliminary observations, designed to show that the Quaternary 
period is really entitled to a separation from the Tertiary, M. 
Gervais enumerates the various kinds of proof which are com- 
monly invoked in favour of the pre-historic existence of man in 
Europe, and then proceeds to subdivide the Quaternary period into 
four epochs, as follows :—(1.) The epoch of Hlephas meridionalis, 
which can no longer be contested, since M. VAbbé Bourgeois has 
discovered worked flints at Saint Prest, but which is difficult to 
separate palzeontologically from the succeeding epoch. (2.) The 
epoch of Hlephas primigenius, characterized by that species, and 
by Ursus speleus, Hyena spelxa, Felis spelea, &c. (3.) The 
epoch of the Reindeer, characterized by the fractured remains of 
that animal. During this period, the animals which were especially 
characteristic of the preceding epoch appear to have become extinct, 
and in certain places their bones are found associated with the 
fragmentary remains of the Reindeer, as well as with the worked 
horns of that animal. (4.) The epoch of the pile-dwellings, of 
which the fauna appears to be the same as that of the present 
day, except that wild oxen and deer, though still existing, then 
roamed oyer districts where they are now unknown. This period 
is posterior to the extinction of the great mammals, and to the 
retreat of the Reindeer into more northern regions. 
Our space will not allow us to discuss the author’s valuable 
descriptions of the numerous caverns in France which he has 
explored, and several of which contain human skulls, nor his 
original observations on the species of mammalia contained in 
them; we must pass at once to a consideration of the manner in 
which the ancient people to whom these skulls belong have been so 
far modified as to have yielded the French population of the present 
day. M. Gervais states that the original inhabitants were Celtic ; 
that after the Glacial period, during the long interval which pre- 
ceded the invasion of Gaul by the Romans, the country was peopled 
successively by races from the East, chiefly from Asia, of which 
the tribes appear to have possessed distinguishing characteristics, 
similar to those spoken of by the ancient historians as characterizing 
the populations of the several provinces of France at the time of the 
