PREFATORY NOTICE, 



THIS Work was commenced under circumstances very different from those under which it 

 is to be carried on. 



The results of the researches in the Valley of the Dordogne, which the late HENRY CHRISTY 

 ardently prosecuted, liberally providing for the cost, and combining his own active exertions 

 and experience with the labours and counsels of friends, must now be almost wholly described 

 by another pen than his. 



He was carried off, in the midst of his self-imposed and well-directed work, by acute illness, 

 brought on by over-exertion in a visit to the Belgian Bone-caves, not long after the first 

 few sheets of this Book had been put into the Printer's hand. 



He had arranged its style and mode of publication; very many Plates had been drawn 

 and lithographed in Paris under his own and M. Lartet's superintendence; descriptions of 

 some few of these had been prepared by him; and a general notice of the relationship held 

 by the Stone Implements and other objects found in the Caves of Dordogne to the Implements 

 and usages of existing savage life and of prehistoric people, which he had already communicated 

 to the Ethnological Society, had been re-arranged by him for the present "Work. 



On his friend and fellow-worker, M. E. Lartet, falls, therefore, the labour of preparing a 

 very much greater portion of this Work than was originally contemplated, although much of 



