FOSSIL MAX FROM LA MADELAINE AND LAUGEEIE BASSE. 



255 



XXV. 



FOSSIL MAN FROM LA MADELAINE AND LAUGERIE BASSE. By M. E. T. HAMS-, M.D., 

 Assistant-Naturalist in the Museum of Natural History, Assistant-General-Secretary of the Anthro- 

 pological Society of Paris, Memher of the Anthropological Societies of London, Florence, and Moscow. 



[C. Plate IX. & X., double.] 



HUMAN Palaeontology has had the rare good fortune to base its first descriptions 

 on the examination of osseous remains presenting extremely pronounced anato- 

 mical peculiarities. The Neanderthal Man gave rise to numerous publications, 

 in which the more salient features of his special morphology were in turn pointed 

 out ; and anthropologists have been able to group around this typical description 

 those of less striking examples belonging to the same ethnic division. In the 

 same way, for the great dolichocephalic race of the South of France the skeletons 

 from Cro-Magnon, and especially that of the " Old Man," have furnished charac- 

 teristics which have been again found, more or less attenuated, in the other 

 Stations of the Reindeer Period in the same or adjacent Provinces. The human 

 bones from La Madelaine, Laugerie Basse, Bruniquel, &c. have recently been 

 successively compared with those from the Eock-shelter of Cro-Magnon; and, 

 thanks to the exaggerated ethnic characters of the latter, a number of pecu- 

 liarities of a secondary order, which at first had escaped notice, have been recog- 

 nized and appreciated. We have been able, up to a certain point, to classify the 

 characters, the degree of fixity of which has been brought out by all these com- 

 parisons ; consequently to determine which are the constant features of the race, 

 and which are individual variations, and the amount of the latter ; and finally, 

 with the aid of these determinations, to commence the study of the extension of 

 this ethnic group in space and time. 



It is scarcely necessary to remark that, as these comparative studies are founded 

 on the examination of only a very few bones, up to the present, the conclusions 

 which may be drawn from them cannot be presented as absolutely definitive. 

 Such as they are, however, these researches may be usefully put forth in this 

 work ; and we will give a rapid survey of them, limited to the centre of opera- 

 tions of the lamented Authors, in accordance with the spirit which presides over 

 the publication of the materials that are to complete it. 



