580 
in this drawing can only refer to that 
animal (Fig.3). Lastly, one other 
Notes and Correspondence. 
| July, 
relic presented to the Academy of. 
Sciences is a lumbar vertebra of a 
young reindeer, traversed from side 
to side by a flint with sharpened 
edge, which is still fixed in the 
wound it had made in the bone. 
Who would, for an instant, refuse 
to recognize in this the action of 
the hand of man ? 
M. Peters has besides discovered 
in the specimens which MM. 
Lartet and Christy had forwarded 
to the museum at Vienna a human 
incisor. 
It results, then, from the whole of 
these observations that a race of 
men ignorant of the use of metals 
lived in Périgord upon the animals 
procured in the chase and upon 
fish at a time when the reindeer, 
the aurochs, and other animals also 
existed ; that they had not tamed 
any species of animal, not even the 
dog, and that they made use of the 
skins of animals sewn together as 
garments. 
This is proved by the discovery 
of needles made of bone, and of the 
incisions recognized upon the bone 
of the leg of the reindeer, from 
which the people had taken the 
tendons in order to employ them as 
thongs, just as the Esquimaux now 
use them to stitch their dresses. 
M. Lartet, whose acquirements in 
paleontology are at the same time 
extended and accurate, has studied 
much more thoroughly than those 
who have preceded him, the dilu- 
vium and the deposits of the qua- 
ternary caverns, and has determined 
the existence of four periods, 
marked out by the presence of the 
aurochs, the reindeer, the cave- 
bear, and the elephant (E. primige- 
nius). The predominance of the 
bones of the reindeer in the centre 
of France, would prove that man 
has lived in Périgord during one of 
these periods, but would not weaken 
this truth, admitted as indubitable 
by the eminent geologist, that is, 
that man has been coexistent with 
other huge quaternary mammalia, 
Nevertheless, M. Elie de Beau- 
mont, in referring to one of the 
very numerous communications on 
the subject of the caverns which 
