82 BOS PRIMIGENIUS. 



from Europe, and now live cither in the Polar or in the Equatorial 

 regions, as the reindeer in the first case and the hippopotamus in 

 the other. Fragmentary as are the relics of the Palaeolithic age, 

 we are able to arrive at certain conclusions as to the condition of 

 man and his mode of lif/3 at that period. Although he had 

 attained to a certain amount of artistic perfection he was entirely 

 ignorant of the potter's art for no fragments of pottery have ever 

 been found in their cave dwellings. Fragments of bone, ivory, 

 horn, and stone exhibit outlined and even shaded sketches of 

 various animals, representing fish, seal, ox, ibex, red deer, Irish 

 elk, bison, horse, cave-bear, reindeer, and the mammoth ; of 

 these there are sculptures also. Pieces of iron-ore found with 

 their remains are supposed to have been used as pigments 

 for painting the body. Among the mammalia he encountered, 

 were the lion, hyaena, elephant, mammoth, hippopotamus, rhin- 

 oceros, bear, musk-sheep, glutton, reindeer, ibex, urus, bison, 

 and others. The character of Europe was very different then 

 than it is at the present day. The German Ocean was 

 an extensive plain, and England was joined to the Continent ; 

 vast herds passed over on migration from north to south. 

 The rivers had not then cut their channels so deeply as at 

 present ; they were much larger, and especially so in times of floods, 

 which inundated the caverns of the limestone districts with mud. 

 The coast of Europe did not extend much further west than 

 at present, and the influence of the Atlantic prevented strongly 

 contrasted seasons. The fauna and flora not only comprised 

 northern and temperate, but also well marked groups of southern 

 forms. France, Belgium, and Britain formed then a neutral zone, 

 the Mediterranean animals and plants got no farther northwards 

 than the Rhine, which formed no barrier, however, to the migration 

 from the north, which passed on to the south unimpeded. The Arctic 

 fox, Polar bear, lemming, and reindeer have \ieen met with in the 

 same caverns and river-gravels with the hippopotamus, lion, and 

 elephas antiquus in every stage of life. M. Lartel, speaking of the 

 district of Perigord, says among the antlers of reindeer which are 



