A STUDY OF PREHISTORIC ANTHROPOLOGY. 615 



The art of tbc tliird period, the Solutriau, was much fiuer, although 

 couflued to the chipping- of fliut and the making of bone and horn im- 

 plements. The representative implement of this epoch is the fliut 

 spear-head or dagger, which was shaped like the laurel leaf. It was in 

 the working of the fliut to make these objects that the best art of the 

 Solutriau epoch is manifested. It may be objected that there was no 

 art required in chipping flint implements, but au inspection of those 

 from the Solutriau epoch, coupled with an attempt on the part of the 

 objector to make one of the larger and finer, will show how far he is 

 from the truth. 



An examination and measurement of these implements is required 

 to understand the delicacy of their manufacture. It must have re- 

 quired much education aud experience and a large amount of manual 

 dexterity. 



Figure 1 represents one of these leaf-shaped points found en cache 

 with ten others. It is one of the largest known, and is in the Museum 

 of Chalou-sur-Saone. Its length is 14 inches, its breadth 34, aud its 

 greatest thickness less than three eighths of an inch. It is made en- 

 tirely by chipping, which is not either primary or secondary, but ap- 

 pears to be even tertiary. The flakes by which it has been reduced 

 have been struck or pressed off from the edge, and are so long and 

 thin as to resemble shavings rather than chips. 



The art of chipping fliut attained its highest point during this epoch. 

 It has never beeu exceeded, and rarely equalled in auy time aud by 

 aoy people. The prehistoric people of Scandinavia, in Europe, and 

 those of Mexico and California, in America, are the only ones which 

 have in any way approached it. The modern Indian has chij^ped his 

 arrow-heads, and many persons of high artistic abilities have, in the 

 interest of science, reproduced them, making them sometimes of flint, 

 obsidian, and even of common bottle-glass. Occasional persons have 

 used their abilities, like " Flint Jack," in making spurious implements 

 to be palmed off as genuine ones. But no flint-kuauper of the present 

 day, whether amateur or professional, has yet been able to reproduce 

 one of the fine, Solutrian, leaf-shaped implements. We have had to 

 contend many times with other fraudulent and spurious specimens 

 which evinced a high degree of art aud manual dexterity, but never 

 with forgeries or counterfeits of these beautiful implements. 



MADELENIAN EPOCH. 



So named from the rock shelter. La Madelaine, on the Vezere, Dor- 

 dogne, about half way between Le Moustier aud Les Eyzies. 



This epoch endured longer than the preceding. Its stations are 

 more frequentj the area more extended; its implements increase in 

 number, variety, and form, and indicate continued progress. While in 

 former epochs the material used by man for the fabrication of his uten- 

 sils and implements was almost entirely of flint, or at least stone, in 



