PRINCE ALBERT I OF MONACO BOULE 497 



ing the more general problem of the origin of life. In each case, he 

 has given lavishly not only of his money but of himself. 



All tourists who have visited the Cote d'Azur, toward the French- 

 Italian frontier, know the Baousse-Rousse, or Red Rocks, whose es- 

 carpments, terminating the chain of the Alps on this coast, drop per- 

 pendicularly to the sea, not far from Menton, but on Italian territory, 

 below the ancient village of Grimaldi, once the property of the 

 Princes of Monaco. 



These superb rocks, with their warm coloring perpetually flooded 

 with bright sunlight, are honeycombed with caves which open broadly 

 on the azure sea in an enchanting region. These caves have long 

 been well known as a result of the discoveries which have been made 

 there at various times. It seems that it was a Prince of Monaco, 

 Florestan I, grandfather of Albert I, who first realized their scien- 

 tific interest. At some time prior to 1848 he sent to Paris a box of 

 miscellaneous debris collected in these caves. I do not know what 

 was done with these bones and fashioned flints in Paris, but from 

 the fact that they were sent 10 years before the triumph of Boucher 

 de Perthes, the inference is that they were not appreciated at their 

 true value by the men of science to whom they were probably shown. 



The caverns of Menton were not long in becoming known and in 

 receiving visits from various naturalists and archeologists. Some 

 excavating, though only superficial work, had already been done 

 there, when in 1870 a French physician, Emile Riviere, whose health 

 forced him to live on the Cote d'Azur, undertook to explore the 

 " caverns of Menton." His investigations were shortly to achieve suc- 

 cess. In 1872 he found a human skeleton in the cave called Cavillon, 

 under a covering of stalagmite. This is the famous " Menton man," 

 now on exhibition in the hall of anthropology of the Paris Museum. 

 The following year, in a neighboring cavern, he uncovered the rem- 

 nants of three other skeletons. In 1874 and 1875 he took two chil- 

 dren's skeletons from another cave, since called for this reason 

 " Grotte des Enf ants " — the Children's Cave. 



These discoveries were widely noticed. Certain features about 

 them recalled those of the formations at Cro Magnon in the Depart- 

 ment of the Dordogne, explored some years before by Louis Lartet. 

 They attracted quite as much attention. For Riviere as for Louis 

 Lartet it was a question of burials of the Paleolithic age ; that is, the 

 Pleistocene. But such great antiquity was doubted by the majority 

 of anthropologists who could not bring themselves to project so far 

 into the past the type of Homo sapiens. The most formidable of 

 these adversaries was Gabriel de Mortillet, who rendered great serv- 

 ice to prehistoric archeology, but who often obstructed the progress 

 of this science by his preconceived ideas and his antireligious beliefs. 



