II72 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



heights, and thence downhill again, and by streams and river banks 

 to the seashore with its sands and dunes, its pools, its rocks and 

 stones, its varied jetsam, so, too, does the archaeologist: and where 

 his finds are scanty, then all the more keenly, yet with special care. 

 Indeed, here training and guidance are needed, for much damage 

 has been done by unskilled ardour of research, and this of course 

 irreparably, as notably to our caverns. In this matter the Speleo- 

 logical Society of Bristol University seems a model of ardour and 

 skill together, well rewarded by success, as growing museum and 

 publications testif3^ yet after them the cavern is left unexhausted, 

 and unsoiled by debris. 



AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL CENTRE AND ITS RECORD.— For 



many years past, at suitable situations. Marine Stations have been 

 arising, and have amply justified themselves by their services to 

 science, and to education as well. Archaeological Stations are similarly 

 needed, again at appropriate points. There are such points in every 

 country ; but as yet on the whole in Western Europe, the exploration 

 of a good many of the numerous caverns of Dordogne has yielded 

 the greatest wealth of results. Running one's finger over the map of 

 France from Bordeaux some sixty miles eastward, one comes to 

 the confluence of the Vezere and Dordogne rivers; and following up 

 the former we find Les Eyzies, a small village, still with troglodytic 

 houses with their living-rooms opening back into caverns, and so 

 to this day continuous with the ancient past. In this district the 

 river has deeply undercut the cliffs at many points, and this often 

 to such enormous overhang that rain does not fall on the houses 

 below, nor even on the Eyzies chateau roof, save when blown in. 

 Here then, between caverns dissolved out by subterranean tributary 

 streamlets, and the overhanging cliffs cut by the river, we have the 

 caverns often opening upon long sheltered spaces of terrace, now 

 left high and dry above the river-level. These afforded a combination 

 of cavern and safety behind, with rain-free shelter in front, so in 

 fact dwelling advantages the best that early man ma^^ anywhere 

 have found. So here, since early quaternary times, there has been 

 a succession of racial types and social formations, each and all of 

 course represented elsewhere, and sometimes more fully, yet nowhere 

 with more approach to completeness of series. Imagine one of these 

 well-cut sections, down through a cavern floor, with its strata 

 marked out like the irregularly spaced shelves of a tall bookcase, 

 and arranged from below upwards and with the successive "works" 

 of prehistory for us now to read. Projecting amid the gravel of the 

 lowest shelf are flints as rough and dubious-looking as eoliths can 

 be ; yet besides these stick out others, far more rude than most we 

 shall find higher up, yet surely implements of the rudest kind. 

 Bones, too, have been left projecting; and during the excavation 



