EMPLOYMENT OF SEWING-NEEDLES. 139 



Our Aborigines of the Reindeer Period, however, had no Sheep, and probably 

 did not know this animal even in the wild state (we have not found any bones of 

 this genus in the hearth-stuffs or refuse-heaps) ; but the bones of the Hare and 

 Rabbit are not very rare in the caves formerly inhabited in Pdrigord ; and the 

 usually unbroken state of these bones may imply that the flesh of these animals 

 did not serve for food to the cave-dwellers. Besides, it is known that a reluctance 

 to eat the flesh of Hare and Rabbit, general enough in ancient times, still exists 

 among some nations of modern Europe ; and it may be that in hunting the Hare 

 and Rabbit the people of the Reindeer Age had no other object than to procure 

 the furs of these animals for making clothes, or, if we were to propose another 

 assimilation with the habits of the Laplanders, for using the spun hair of 

 their fur. 



We have represented in figs. 5, 21, and 22, of B. Plate XVII., three tools of 

 Reindeer antler, having one extremity truncated, the other cut across with shallow 

 notches and ending in a blunt point. In endeavouring to explain the probable use 

 of these little implements, it was at first thought that they might be some kind of 

 crochet-hook, for making thread, or for knitting with very large meshes; but 

 since these three specimens were drawn, other similar specimens have been found 

 quite perfect, with a somewhat sharp point, which is wanting in these figured 

 specimens. Hence they who at first were disposed to consider them knitting 

 hooks would now be inclined to regard them as points of barbless arrows, intended 

 to be fastened to the shaft with a ligature in the notches of the lower end. With 

 these different interpretations, we still leave them in some uncertainty. 



Before ending this detailed account of the art of sewing among the Aborigines 

 of the Reindeer Period, I must state that the eyed needles were not found 

 indifferently in all the Stations of that Period. 



In Dordogne, it is at Les Eyzies, at Laugerie Basse, and at La Madelaine that 

 the largest quantity of Needles of this form have been collected, and always in 

 company with Harpoon-heads of the barbed type. It is also with these barbed 

 weapon-heads that similar Needles have been found in the Bruniquel Cave, by 

 M. De Lastic, and in the rock-shelters of the same place, so successfully explored 

 by M. Brun of Montauban. One of those eyed needles had been discovered in 

 1852 by M. Alfred Fontan, who was kind enough to intrust it to me for illus- 

 tration in the ' Annales des Sciences Naturelles ' in 1861*. M. Fontan found it 

 in the lower cave of Massat (Arie"ge), where it was associated with the barbed 

 weapon-heads. Since that time, other Needles, with barbed harpoons, have been 



* Ann. des Sc. Nat. 4"" serie, Zoologie, vol. xv. 1861, p. 251, pi. 13. fig. 4. 



