782 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLI. No. 1065 



fort must be made to establish scientific 

 fundamentals for new investigations. Ef- 

 forts must be made to find the causes of 

 immunity, and after solving this question 

 to determine without infection the disease- 

 resistant qualities in different varieties and 

 individuals in order to be able to establish 

 the desired resistance and at the same time 

 eliminate undesirable qualities. It is only 

 by working along this line that the breed- 

 ing of disease-resistant varieties on a sci- 

 entific basis can be accomplished and re- 

 sults which lie within the limits of possi- 

 bility obtained. 



Otto Appel 

 Kaiserliche Biologische Anstalt, 

 Beklin-Dahlem 



THE CAVERN OF THE THESE BROTHEES 

 (ARIEGE) 



For the third time in less than three years 

 it has been the good fortune of Count Begouen 

 of Toulouse to announce the discovery of im- 

 portant works of art left by paleolithic man 

 on the walls and floor of Pyrenean caverns. 

 His two previous discoveries were noted at 

 the time in the columns of Science.^ 



Quaternary art objects may be classed 

 under two heads : the portable and the sta- 

 tionary. The portable class includes in part 

 carved tools, weapons and ceremonial objects, 

 such as poniards, spear throwers, batons, etc. 

 It also includes- engraved pebbles as well as 

 carved fragments of stone, bone, ivory and the 

 horn of stag and reindeer ; in fact, almost any- 

 thing that could be seized upon to satisfy the 

 exuberant demands of the cave man's artistic 

 impulse. 



Stationary art embellishes the walls and 

 ceilings of caverns and rock shelters. In rare 

 instances the fine clay of the cavern floor was 

 utilized for sketching and modeling purposes. 

 The scientific world has been more or less fa- 

 miliar with the portable class of troglodyte art 

 for more than half a century. Our acquain- 

 tance with the stationary art is of more re- 



1 N. S., XXXVI., pp. 269 and 796, 1912. 



cent date. The first discovery of this kind 

 was made by Sautuola in 1879 at the cavern of 

 Altamira in northern Spain. The scientific 

 world, however, did not grasp the real signifi- 

 cance of Sautuola's discovery until, after the 

 lapse of nearly twenty years, similar finds had 

 been made in France. 



All three of Count Begouen's discoveries 

 have to do principally with cave art of the 

 stationary kind. In July, 1912, near his 

 country estate of " Les Espas," which is only 

 a short distance from Saint-Girons (Ariege), 

 he found a series of subterranean galleries - 

 and connecting corridors opening out of an 

 underground stream bed. On the walls of one 

 of the corridors were several engravings of 

 the horse, reindeer, mammoth, etc. Five days 

 later it was the privilege of the writer to see 

 this prehistoric gallery, called Tuc d'Audou- 

 bert, in company with Count Begouen and 

 his three sons. 



In October of the same year Count Begouen 

 and bis sons succeeded in gaining entrance to 

 an additional gallery of the series, but not 

 until after they had broken down two stalag- 

 mite pillars that blocked the narrow passage 

 way. What they found there has already 

 been described. The most notable objects 

 were two figures of the bison modeled in the 

 clay of the cavern floor. They owed their 

 preservation to the accidental sealing up of 

 the gallery ages ago by the stalagmite pillars. 

 In view of their excellence, it is probable that 

 they are not unique examples; that perhaps 

 other similar figures less fortunately situated 

 have been destroyed because the artist did 

 not know how to temper and fire his product. 



The need of something less difficult to ma- 

 nipulate than stone, bone, ivory and horn 

 must have been ever present in the experience 

 of the troglodyte artist; it is not strange 

 therefore that he should have finally hit upon 

 clay. This illustrates how near an individual 

 or a race may come to some great discovery 

 and yet fall short of it. Thus was the dis- 

 covery of the ceramic art left to the later 

 more practical, if less artistic, neolithic races. 



The latest discovery of Count Begouen and 



