August 30, 1912] 



SCIENCE 



269 



armies that we must look for the physical sal- 

 vation of the sons of men. Man may redeem 

 himself from death, not by sweeping the heaT- 

 ens with the space-annihilating telescope, but 

 by peering into the dust of the earth with the 

 space-creating microscope. 



We see then that the principle of the incar- 

 nation of ideas, of the realization in the world 

 of substance of what had been vaguely fore- 

 shadowed in the world of mind, is a process 

 which has gone on in science as surely but per- 

 haps not so conspicuously as it has in art. 

 The artist succeeds more or less perfectly to 

 incarnate his ideas of beauty in stone, in 

 wood, in metal or in pigment, but no painter 

 ever yet expressed all the loveliness in his 

 mind, pellucid though his pigments were; the 

 poet strives to give utterance to the majesty of 

 his imagination, but no poet was ever yet satis- 

 fied that his words, choice though they were, 

 portrayed all the delicacy of his fancy or the 

 glory of his dreams. The musician is con- 

 scious that after he has swept the lyre with 

 melodies of transcendent sweetness, there are 

 unheard melodies that are sweeter still; the 

 preacher whose eloquence stirs the vast cathe- 

 dral returns home depressed in that his burn- 

 ing words did not rise to the fever-height of 

 his fervor. The saint, aiming at the highest 

 ideals of holiness, has still to confess failure 

 whether as anchorite, prophet, missioner or 

 philanthropist. 



But it is sometimes given to the man of 

 science to touch, to taste, to handle what was 

 once only a notion, a suggestion, a forecast 

 either in his own day or in that of a less for- 

 tunate predecessor in the earlier times of the 

 history of a thought. 



D. Fraser Harris 



DALHOUSIE tjNrVERSITT 



A NEW FRENCS CAVERN WITS PALEO- 

 LITHIC MURAL ENGRAVINGS 

 To Count Begouen, of Toulouse, and his 

 two sons, belongs the credit for the discovery 

 of a new cavern with paleolithic mural en- 

 gravings. The eldest son, Max, is at present 

 a pupil of Professor Emile Cartailhac, as was 

 his father before him. Count Begonen, with 



his family, is spending the summer at his 

 country place, " Les Espas," at Montesquieu- 

 Avantes, near St. Girons (Ariege). On prop- 

 erty adjoining his is the cavern of Enlene 

 knovm for many years and where the count 

 himself recently discovered a finely carved 

 spear-thrower of reindeer horn. Near Enlene 

 the Volp, a small stream, disappears under a 

 ridge of limestone and reappears about one 

 kilometer farther down. The escarpment 

 where the Volp reappears has long been 

 known as the Tuc d'Audoubert. After im- 

 provising a small canoe made of a box and 

 given stability by a float on either side — a keg 

 and an oil can, on Saturday, July 20, Count 

 Begouen and his sons ascended the channel 

 for about 50 meters, as far as the present level 

 of the water would permit of rowing. By 

 bridging with ladders at intervals they as- 

 cended on foot much farther and then climbed 

 to the entrance to a cavern on the left. This 

 led to a series of large chambers remarkable 

 for the quantity as well as beauty of the 

 stalagmite and stalactite formations. Luckily 

 these had not been despoiled by the hand of 

 the tourist. Only two or three times did the 

 party of four find evidence that they were not 

 the first to behold these wonderful art products 

 of nature. At one point a name with the 

 date 1689 ; at another a name and the date 

 1701. After traversing a number of galleries 

 they at last came to a small corridor near the 

 end of which they saw a small pit which ap- 

 peared to have been recently dug in a search 

 for artifacts. The disappointment on finding 

 the pit indicating that another archeologist 

 had been there before was not of long dura- 

 tion, for on looking up they beheld simul- 

 taneously a number of animal forms deli- 

 cately incised on the sloping walls, some of 

 them surrounded by thick layers of stalag- 

 mite, others partially hid by the same. The 

 figures include about half a dozen horses, 

 nearly as many bison, one reindeer, one bovine 

 animal and some ten curious signs, probably 

 a weapon. One of the horses is represented 

 as being caught in a trap, others as being 

 struck by arrows. The figure of the reindeer 



