NATURAL HISTORY OF THE RIVIERA. 215 



hour baskets of octopi were coming in, together with sea urchins and 

 sea wolves {loup), milhons of small fry — which are eaten raw— snails 

 and thrushes, to feed the people of the town. The women who 

 kept the stalls were glad to see me, for I often paid them a visit, 

 and would purchase for a trifle what no one else would buy — fishing 

 frogs and sting-fish, spider-crabs and mantis shrimps, just arrived 

 from the bottom of the sea. The basket which I carried was soon 

 filled with sufficient specimens to stock a good-sized aquarium, and 

 as 1 moved away more than one epicure would exclaim, " Chacun a 

 son gout.''' But the morning of our walk we could not remain to 

 purchase, and we went on through the Eastern Bay, over whose 

 deep blue waves the sun was throwing a flood of light, reflecting 

 near the shore the caves in the red rocks which mark the boundary 

 line of Italy, and which in ages past formed the picturesque 

 habitation of primeval man, whose records, after lying hidden in 

 the earth for ages, are now being dug up and read. We thought 

 as we stood below the caves, that if the rocks could only speak and 

 tell us what had passed before them, how full of interest the history 

 would be. Were men always either making love or fighting then, 

 as they are now ? Were these palatial caves won and kept without 

 a struggle ? And if, as probably was the case, many a fierce 

 struggle took place on their account, were the vanquished thrown 

 over the rocks into the sea below us ; or were they eaten ? Then 

 how did the innumerable bones of hons, bears, and deer and horses 

 become mingled with the dust within the caves ? And what was 

 the history of the men whose skeletons were found lately, nineteen 

 feet below the soil ? As we thought about these things, and my 

 companion was soliloquising about the evolution of man and the 

 speedy advent of the Millennium, we scrambled up into the smallest 

 cave, which had hitherto been very little disturbed, and, on entering 

 it were astonished to find a man destitute of clothing, in puris 

 naturalibus, lying baskmg in the sun, breakfasting on limpets which 

 he had caught on the rocks below. This original picture of 

 primeval-like man in a primeval cave was not of long duration, 



