paljEontology. 269 



rented upon the ancient coins of Ganl. "We have not found its bones 

 in the dolmens and other vaults styled Celtic in which are frequently 

 found associated the remains of wild and domesticated animals, and 

 in which we have observed on two occasions in the neighbourhood of 

 Paris the bones of the beaver. The reindeer has not, as far as we 

 know, been yet found in the peat mosses of France. Messrs. Garig- 

 non and H. Tilhol have not recorded its presence in certain caverns 

 of the Ari^ge which they have justly assimilated by their zoological 

 characteristics and also by the presence of instruments of polished 

 stone to the most ancient lake-dwellings of Switzerland. We know 

 that up to the present the reindeer is missed among the fauna of 

 this marine crib-work, and yet we have been able to study its re- 

 mains coming from a cavern of the neighbourhood (that of Mont- 

 Saleve) where the association of flints simply cut, and of mammals 

 belonging to the same period, is shewn under the same condition as in 

 our grottoes of Perigord. 



Thus, let the disappearance of the reindeer from our temperate 

 Europe be the result of the local extinction of this species, or of its 

 being driven back by the progressive development of human societies, 

 or, if you choose, of its gradual and voluntary retreat in consequence 

 of changes in the climatic conditions, it is not less probable that this 

 disappearance dates back to a phase of the pre-historic times prior to 

 the introduction of the domesticated races and the employment of the 

 metals in our Western Europe. 



The Academy will remark that in the letter of Messrs. Lartet and 

 Christy, as well as in the communication which I had the honor of 

 recently making on the subject of the cavern of Bruniquel, no mention 

 has been made of human bones found as well in this latter locality as 

 in the grotto of Eyzies. 



This silence is explained by the fact that the epoch of the burial of 

 these remains seems to us possibly less ancient than that from which 

 dates the accumulation of reindeer bones and instruments of flint or 

 wrought bone. 



