Of Western Europe. i\ 



great ox ; to which may be added — as extinct in Western 

 Europe, though still surviving in colder regions — the 

 reindeer. The urus was extinct in Gaul before the 

 campaigns of Julius Cassar, though it survived in Ger- 

 many long after. The reindeer must have disappeared 

 then, at a still earlier day, and has been kept alive to 

 this day in Sweden and Norway, only by rigid game 

 laws. The mammoth and rhinoceros appear to have 

 vanished at a still more remote period, as only a few of 

 their bodies have been found in Siberia, incased in ice, 

 which enveloped them before the flesh had begun to de- 

 cay. Of the cave bear and others we have nothing but 

 fossil remains. Hence, Mr. Lartet, assuming epochs 

 of successive disappearance, divides the post-pliocene 

 age into four periods — those of the cave bear, of the 

 mammoth and rhinoceros, of the reindeer, and of the 

 urus. The proposition is, therefore, to show that man 

 was a cotemporary with the first three of these periods. 

 The caves of Perigord furnish part of the proofs. 

 These caves have yielded numerous instruments made 

 of reindeer horn. Some fragments appear to have been 

 sawed. One is fashioned into a delicate, fine-pointed 

 needle, with an eye so small it seemed impossible it 

 could be made with the rude implements of those prim- 

 itive people. But this doubt was removed when Mr. 

 Lartet, with one of the sharp-pointed pieces of quartz, 

 which seemed to have been used as awls, made a punc- 

 ture as fine. Some of the reindeer horns have designs 

 engraved upon them, representing- the deer, elk, ox, 

 boar, and other animals. These are not all mere out- 

 line sketches ; some are shaded drawings. The most 

 interesting is an unfinished dagger, the handle carved to 



