ARCHEOLOGY. (FRANCE.) 



23 





ground; entrance was gained from above by one 

 or more downward-slanting passages. They were 

 built of rough, undressed, unmortared stone, the 

 walls gradually converging until they met in a 

 " cyclopean " or " false " arch, completed by a 

 large flagstone laid across. In some cases their 

 very dimensions suggested the traditional be- 

 lief that they were built for a dwarfish race; 

 but Prof. Boyd Dawkins, in the discussion, an- 

 swered that their size had no direct relation to 

 the size of the people, as it was necessary that 

 they should be restricted in size to place difficulty 

 in the way of the enemy. 



During the demolition of the old Bluecoat 

 School, in Newgate Street, London (the Christ's 

 Hospital of Lamb's essay), pieces of the Roman 

 wall, the existence of which was well known, 

 were laid bare. The wall ran along the west end 

 -of the Gray Friars' Cloister, and was about 10 

 feet high. The masonry, which consisted of six 

 courses, was in excellent preservation. Close by 

 formerly stood an archway, known as the New 

 Gate, which spanned a narrow lane where a 

 broad and level thoroughfare now runs. The 

 New Gate was the fifth of the great gates of 

 London, and was so called, as Stow records, from 

 its having been " latlier built than the rest." 



France. While etchings executed with much 

 spirit upon bone and ivory by the West Euro- 

 pean cave-dwellers of the later Paleolithic age 

 have been well known for many years, the first 

 discovery of engravings and pictographs on the 

 sides of caverns was announced by M. E. Ri- 

 viere in 1895. An account of another discovery 

 of similar engravings was published in the 

 Comptes Rendus of the French Academy of 

 Sciences for Dec. 9, 1901, by MM. Capitan and 

 Breuil. It embraced 109 figures of the Magda- 

 lenian epoch engraved on the vertical w r alls of 

 the cave of Combarelles near Eyzies in the 

 Dordogne for 100 meters on each side of the pas- 

 sage. They begin about 15 or 20 centimeters 

 from the ground, and reach to an average height 

 of 1.50 meter, often extending to the roof, which 

 is from 1 to 2 meters in height. The figures are 

 for the most pact deeply engraved in the rocks, 

 but in some of the designs are merely scratched; 

 and they are often covered by layers of stalag- 

 mite, which is sometimes thick enough to oblit- 

 erate them. In some cases the cuttings have 

 been reenforced, and occasionally replaced, by 

 black pigment. In some instances the surface of 

 the rock has been scraped away around the con- 

 tour of the figure, particularly of the head, so 

 as to throw it into slight relief. The style of 

 x the engravings agrees completely with that of 

 x the etchings on bone and antler of the Magda- 

 lenian stations, and is such as to make it seem 

 certain that they were drawn by men familiar 

 with the living animals. The animals pictured 

 are represented separately, intermingled, or in 

 groups. Among them are horses of two distinct 

 types. One type is marked by a massive head 

 with a convex nose, a mane short and stiff or 

 long and flowing, and a tail similar to that of 

 ordinary horses. Evidences that some of these 

 horses were domesticated appears in the repre- 

 sentation of halters upon them or of cords round 

 the muzzle, and a covering of some sort seems 

 to have been thrown over the backs of two of 

 them. Horses of the other type are of more ele- 

 gant shape, with small heads, slender legs, short 

 and erect manes, and tails starting low down and 

 bare except for a terminal tuft of long hair. Rep- 

 resentations of the ox-tribe are less freqiient. 

 Three of the figures appear to be bisons, one is 

 like domestic cattle, and a third kind suggests 



certain African antelopes. The difference be- 

 tween the reindeer, of which there are two figures, 

 and the wild deer of Europe, of which there are 

 three, is clearly marked. The mammoth is repre- 

 sented by 14 drawings, borne are entirely cov- 

 ered with hair; others have less hair, it being 

 shown on the under side of the body, on the head, 

 and occasionally around the mouth. The tusks 

 are always strongly secured, and the feet are very 

 distinctly drawn. The details of the form of the 

 ears are indicated in two of the figures. The 

 only approach to the representation of a human 

 face is a kind of irregular circle within which 

 two eyes are indicated and marks are made for 

 the nose and mouth. Among the simple signs 

 described by the authors as occurring with the 

 engravings are three roof-like designs somewhat 

 complicated, a double contoured lozenge in the 

 body of a horse, some marks resembling the 

 letter M, semicircles, etc., and a group of small 

 cups. Comparisons are made between some of 

 these designs and those found in the Mas d'Azil 

 cave. The author's paper is only a preliminary 

 one. 



Sketches and paintings upon the walls of pre- 

 historic caves in the Dordogne have been the sub- 

 ject of several communications to the French 

 Academy of Sciences. Messrs. Capitan and 

 Breuil gave accounts, June 23, of the paintings on 

 the wall of the cave of Font de Gaume. The 

 pictures comprised 80 figures painted in red ochre 

 and manganese black, 49 of which are bisons. 

 They are all engraved and painted; and in the 

 case of some of them the surface of the rock 

 has also been scraped. Many of the designs were 

 found covered with a thick layer of stalagmite. 

 The original of the figure of a running bison 

 reproduced in connection with an article on the 

 subject by Mr. A. C. Haddon (Nature, Sept. 4, 

 1902) is 1 meter (or 39 J inches) long and 60 cen- 

 timeters (or 25 J inches) high. It is entirely 

 painted in a brown color with a red tint on the 

 forehead. These are the first frescoes recorded in 

 France, the engraved designs published by M. 

 Emile Riviere in 1895 from the cave of La 

 Mouthe being rarely colored, and then only 

 partly so. An analysis of the coloring matters 

 employed by the paleolithic painters, made by M. 

 Henri Moissan, shows that they are ochres com- 

 posed of oxids of iron and manganese in varied 

 proportions. In a paper presented to the Acad- 

 emy July 28, M. Emile Riviere marked the dis- 

 tinction between the true frescoes described by 

 MM. Capitan and Breuil, and the pictures he had 

 discovered in the cave of La Mouthe in the 

 Dordogne. The sketches at La Mouthe are nearly 

 all engravings of greater or less depth, or shal- 

 low markings made by scraping and scratching 

 the rock. Traces of paint were found on two 

 of the figures. One of them represents a rumi- 

 nant, in which the contour of the hind limbs is 

 colored a blackish red brown, especially at the 

 level of the joints and hoofs, and the left flank 

 is marked with ten spots of the same color, in a 

 line from the shoulder to the upper part of the 

 thigh. The other design is a kind of hut. the 

 form of which is designated by a scraping of the 

 rock rather than by an engraved contour line. 

 The color has been 'laid on upon a part of the 

 scratches in bands nearly parallel and alternately 

 clear and dark, and is much loss deep than in the 

 figure of the ruminant. This is said by Mr. 

 Haddon to be the only known drawing of a habi- 

 tation of primitive man. Without saying 

 whether he regards these drawings as of the same 

 age with the paintings of the Font de Gaume, 

 M. Riviere believes that they are certainly Paleo- 



