PAL-S;ONTOLOGY. 267 



these horns, a faintly defined trace of ears is perceived ; and beneath 

 the chin, that of a tuft of hair or a beard, peculiarities which would 

 suggest readily enough a female wild goat, if they were not contra- 

 dicted by a perceptible curving of the forehead and a swelling of 

 the neck behind the ears, which would seem to forbid this conjec- 

 ture. In this figure, moreover, the designer has, without any appa- 

 Tent necessity, folded back the hind extremities under the animal's 

 belly, in such a way that its finely divided hoofs touch the abdomen. 



Among the carved specimens coming from this same locality of 

 Laugerie-Basse, we may quote a rounded staff made of the shank of a 

 reindeer's horn, and terminated at one end by a spear-point with a 

 lateral recurrent hook. Was this a utensil, a weapon, or a symbol of 

 authority? * "We cannot say. Immediately above the hook we per- 

 ceived carved in half relief upon three of its faces a horse's head, 

 with ears lying down, and a little long for the species, but not suffi- 

 ciently so to permit of our assigning this figure to the ass. Farther 

 on, but still in the continuation of the stafi", we meet with a second 

 head with delicate snout and armed with branching horns. The 

 basilary antlers are carved in front upon the horizontal prolongation 

 of the stafF, while the butt and the neck and shoulders are projected 

 in a reverse direction behind ; the slender shape of the head, where no 

 trace of a muzzle is perceptible, the apparent lengthening of one of 

 the basilary antlers, and the entire physiognomy of this figure would 

 induce us to attribute it to the reindeer rather than the elephant stag. 

 In front of the snout of this head, we find still another figure simply 

 engraved in outline, and which might be well enough accepted as the 

 form of a fish. 



There is another capital specimen in which the art sentiment is 

 specially revealed by the skill which the artist has displayed in adopt- 

 ing animal forms to the necessities of common use, without doing 

 them too much violence. It is a dagger or short sword of reindeer's 

 horn, of which the whole handle is formed of the body of an animal ; 

 the hind legs are lying down in the direction of the blade ; the head, 

 which has the snout elevated, forms with the back and rump a hollow 

 intended to facilitate the grasping of this weapon by a hand necessarily 

 much smaller than those of our European races. The head is armed 

 with branching horns, which are united to the sides of the neck and 

 shoulders, without interfering in the slightest degree with the grasp ; 

 but the basilary antlers must have been suppressed. The ear is much 

 smaller than that of the stag, and in its position also approaches more 



