32 PREHISTORIC FISHING. 



Such is M, Edouard Lartet's comment on the engraved piece. Though, of 

 course, it cannot be decided whether the artist intended to represent an eel, 

 lamprey, or serpent, it was not deemed superfluous to reproduce here the group, 

 and to transcribe the observations relating to it. 



FIG. 38. Figure of a seal traced on a drilled dear's tooth. Duruthy Grotto. 



The cave-dwellers of the reindeer-period evidently had seen seals, either on 

 the sea-coasts or in the rivers Avhich these animals may have ascended some 

 distance at the time of cave-inhabitation here considered. Mention is made of 

 a representation of a seal found by M. Piette in the cave of Gourdan, Department 

 of Haute-Garonne. I have not seen a figure of this specimen, but I am able to 

 present in Fig. 38 a delineation of a drilled bear's tooth, upon which the outline 

 of a seal is so distinctly traced, that the artist's intention to draw the likeness of 

 a phocine animal cannot be doubted. The engraved tooth is one of the fifty, 

 which, as stated on a preceding page, were discovered by Messrs. Lartet and 

 Duparc in the lowest deposit of the Duruthy Grotto.* 



2. NEOLITHIC AGE. 



GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS. 



In the later or neolithic period a marked change in the condition of prehis- 

 toric men in Europe is observable. A milder temperature was now prevailing, 

 the former climate having gradually yielded its rigor, and become more like that 

 of our time. The mammoth, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, great bear, and hyena 



* Materiaux ; Vol. IX, 1874 ; p. 143, Fig. 38. 



