FISH-REMAINS. 11 



The remains of the salmon have been found abundantly in the breccia of a 

 number of caves in the Dordogne district and in neighboring regions in the 

 South of France, and hence it may be concluded that this species of fish served 

 largely for food among the people of the reindeer-age. Yet, among the numerous 

 salmon-remains, which were carefully examined by Dr. H. E. Sauvage, not a 

 single entire skeleton has been discovered. He has seen only portions of the 

 vertebral column, as if nothing but the edible part of the fish had been brought 

 to the caves. Had the salmon-heads been there, they would have been as well 

 preserved as those of the small cyprinoids which are found in the same deposits. 

 He refers to some species of salmon common in the Northwest of America, as 

 Salmo qidnnat, Richardson, Salmo G-airdneri, Richardson, Salmo paucidens, Rich- 

 ardson, Salmo lycaodon, Pallas, and Salmo proteiis, Pallas, and then continues: 



"Unfortunately we have no materials for the study and comparison of the 

 osteology of these different salmons ; hence it is impossible for us to refer any of 

 the salmon-bones found in the reindeer-caves to one rather than another of 

 these species. Indeed, we have been unable to recognize any difference between 

 the salmon vertebrae from the caves and those of the living Salmo salar, Linne, 

 although we have taken care to compare vertebrae from the same region and of 

 the same size, derived from individuals presumably of the same age. 



"We know that the salmon has a very wide geographical distribution, 

 the same species being met with in Scandinavia, Russia, Germany, France, 

 Galicia, Britain, Iceland, and in North America, according to Mitchill, Storer, 

 Richardson, DeKay, Griinther, and other naturalists ; the salmon reaching very 

 high latitudes. 



" The mammalian fauna of the reindeer-age is that of the boreal regions of 

 to-day; the birds killed by the cave-dwellers of Perigord* are the birds of this 

 region ; the shells they used for ornament, obtained from the shores of the 

 Atlantic and Mediterranean, are such as live there still. It is therefore highly 

 probable, not to say certain, that the existing Salmo salar was the common salmon 

 of the Dordogne, affording food to the cave-dwellers of the Vezere."f 



It is worthy of notice that at the present time the salmon does not come up 

 as high as the Vezere, nor even to that part of the Dordogne, into which the 

 Vezere empties. "A few leagues below the confluence of the two streams, not far 

 from Lalinde," says Dr. Broca, "there exists in the bed of the Dordogne a bank 

 of rocks, which in high water forms a rapid and at low water a regular cascade, 

 called the Saut de la Gratusse. This is the present limit of the salmon, and as, in 

 the days of the troglodytes, they did not stop here, we must conclude that the level 

 of the Dordogne since then has lowered, either by the wearing down of the bed 



* An old division of France, which now forms the Department of Dordogne and a part of that of Gironde. 

 ) Sauvnge: On Fishing during the Reindeer-Period; Eeliquia? Aquitnnicso; I, p. 221. 



