278 



V. — Note on a Collection of Palceolithic Remains from the Valley of 

 the River Ve%ere. — By John Jope Rogers. 



Raad May 23rcZ, 1876. 



I HAVE much pleasure in conveying to the Museum of our 

 Institution a small hut interesting collection of palseolithic 

 remains from the valley of the river Yezere, in the department of 

 Dordogne, in France, exhumed in 1863 by the two late eminent 

 antiquaries, Mr. Henry Christy and Mons. Edouard Lartet, and 

 recently placed in my hands by the trustees of the Christy 

 Museum in London, for our Museum in Truro. 



I have to request that, after they have been exhibited at our 

 Spring Meeting, they should be placed together in one of the 

 cases of the museum, with a label indicating that they are 

 presented by the trustees of the Christy Museum. 



The special interest and value which these small objects 

 possess are derived from the circumstance that they were all 

 found in the same valley, in the territory known to the Romans 

 as Aquitania, and afterwards an appanage to the English crown 

 during the reign of several of our Plantagenet kings ; and 

 further, and chiefly, because they represent an age which was 

 most probably more remote than any of our earliest Cornish 

 relics ; earlier than any Cromlechs and barrows, or any Celtic 

 remains ; earlier than the French Dolmens, Danish Kjokken- 

 Moddings, and the lake dwellings of Switzerland. They take 

 us back to the earliest period at which, at present, we have any 

 trace of man. Who shall say how many centuries before the 

 Christian era they represent ? 



The Reindeer had not become extinct in Southern Europe, as 

 these small fragments, carved by the hand of man, declare. 



Domestic animals had not yet become the comjDanions and the 

 pets of our race ; but the men of this remote period probably 

 lived a rude and savage life in eaves, using their flint instru- 

 ments, and living on herbs, roots, and the flesh of the reindeer, 

 whose horns and bones bear the marks of their untutored art. 



