CHAP, vii.] DOMESTIC PURSUITS NO POTTERY. 209 



The vessels for holding water were probably made of 

 wood, and skin, and horn, of which last material the 

 bison, the urus, and the musk sheep would offer a 

 plentiful supply, but of these perishable substances no 

 trace has been preserved. They may also have made 

 vessels for containing fluids after the manner of the 

 Eskimos by cementing pieces of stone together with a 

 mixture of fat and lamp-black. There is no reason to 

 suppose that they used vessels of pottery, since no pot- 

 sherds have been discovered in any of the refuse-heaps 

 which have been carefully explored in France, Germany, 

 Switzerland, and Britain. The round -bottomed vase 

 from the Trou du Frontal, considered by M. Dupont to 

 imply that the art of pottery was known at this time, 

 is of the same fashion as those of the Neolithic age from 

 the pile dwellings of Switzerland, and probably belongs 

 to that age. The potsherds found in the cave of Kuhlock 

 are also of the same make as the Neolithic pottery, and 

 the same remark applies equally to most if not all the 

 cases of its occurrence quoted by Mr. J. C. Southall 1 from 

 France, such as Bruniquel and others. Had the Cave- 

 men been acquainted with the potter's art, there is every 

 reason to believe that traces of it would be abundant 

 in every refuse-heap, as they were subsequently in those 

 of all pottery-using peoples, a fragment of pottery or 

 of burnt clay being as little liable to destruction as a 

 fragment of bone or antler. The absence of Palaeolithic 

 pottery in the French caves is confirmed by the wide 

 experience of MM. Massenat, Lalande, and Cartailhac, 

 who write as follows : " La poterie, nous saisissons 

 Toccasion de le dire n'a jamais ete trouvee par nous dans 

 les couches franchement intacte de Tage du renne. Elle 



1 TJie Recent Origin of Man, 8vo, 1875, p. 195 et seq. 

 P 



