THE REINDEER-PERIOD. 9 



dwelled in the valley of the Vezere, it may not be out of place to review their 

 condition of existence in a few words, in order to show in what respects they 

 differed from later and more advanced men of the European stone age, to whom 

 reference will be made hereafter : 



They subsisted by hunting and fishing, adding, as may be assumed, to their 

 animal food such fruits as were spontaneously offered by nature. They had made 

 no steps toward an agricultural state, and domesticated animals probably were 

 entirely wanting. As dwellings they used caves, overhanging rocks, and doubt- 

 less rude huts constructed of boughs, skins, or other materials. Their tools and 

 weapons were made, sometimes very skillfully, of stone, horn, and bone. They 

 employed only chipped stone implements, and were unacquainted with the art of 

 making vessels of clay. Their dress consisted of skins sewed together with 

 sinews. An artistic tendency, which manifests itself in primitive attempts at 

 drawing and carving, must be regarded as a feature distinguishing them from the 

 populations of the later stone age. 



As may be imagined, the stations of the reindeer-period, in France, are not 

 confined to the valley of the Vezere, many others having been discovered in 

 different parts of that country, and in Europe generally. But I know of a few 

 only, in addition, which have yielded relics perhaps designed for fishing-purposes, 

 and these are the " Kesslerloch," near Thayngen, in the Canton of Schaffhausen, 

 Switzerland, and Kent's Cavern, near Torquay, Devonshire, England. The Swiss 

 cave contained a large number of animal remains, among them those of the rein- 

 deer and alpine hare in greatest abundance, implements of flint, harpoon-heads 

 and other objects of bone and horn, and even engraved designs of animals. 



Kent's Cavern appears to have been resorted to by man at an earlier period 

 than any of the French caves previously mentioned ; for there were found in it 

 abundantly not only the remains of the horse and reindeer, but also those of the 

 cave-lion, cave-hyena, and cave-bear; and while bones of the mammoth are not 

 very common, remains of the woolly rhinoceros have occurred quite frequently.* 

 The flint implements of Kent's Cavern are not unlike those from the caves of 

 the Vezere Valley. Only a few objects of horn and bone have come to light, 

 three of them being harpoon-heads. 



As far as I know, only one representation of an animal has been discovered 

 in an English cave, namely, the delineation of a horse (head and fore-quarters) 

 on a smoothed fragment of a rib. This specimen of ancient art was met with in 

 the Robin-Hood Cave, at Cresswell Crags, Northeastern Derbyshire. 



The question to what race or races the men of the palaeolithic epoch belonged 

 is yet undecided. Comparatively few human remains referable to quaternary 

 times have been discovered, and the skulls which were in a condition to permit 

 examination, exhibit both the brachycephalous and dolichocephalous types. The 

 attempts to identify these men with historically known or still existing popula- 



* Teeth of the sahre-toothed tiger (MacJiairodus laKdens), first noticed in the tertiary, ware also found. 

 2R 



