Januabt 25, 1907] 



SCIENCE 



133 



and. to the Museum of National Antiquities 

 at Saint-Germain. The Lartet and Christy 

 explorations were practically confined to 

 the rock shelters and shallow caves. If 

 these men had lived longer, they might have 

 discovered the extensive subterranean cav- 

 erns of the neighborhood, the walls of 

 which are decorated with a remarkable 

 series of frescoes and engravings. 



The valley of the Vezere has been an at- 

 tractive field for archeological excursions 

 ever since the appearance of Lartet and 

 Christy's classic work; and has come even 

 more into favor since 1895, when the first 

 discovery was made of engravings and fres- 

 coes on the walls of one of the caverns. 

 Several other caverns have been explored 

 during the past six years with similar re- 

 sults. In company with a small party of 

 Frenchmen from Paris, members of the 

 Societe des Excursions Scientifiques, I vis- 

 ited the region during the summer of 1903. 



Vezere collections have found their way 

 practically into all the important museums 

 of the world, but the British Museum 

 (Bloomsbury), the Natural History Mu- 

 seum, Paris, and the Museum of National 

 Antiquities at Saint-Germain-en-Laye con- 

 tain the major part. These should all be 

 visited before, as well as after, a trip to the 

 Dordogne. The train can be taken direct 

 from Paris (Gare d 'Orleans) to Perigueux, 

 the capital of the department of Dordogne, 

 the site of ancient Vesuna of the Petroeorii 

 and later a flourishing Roman town. Here 

 one may stop with profit to see the ruins of 

 a Roman amphitheater and tower, also the 

 Musee de Perigord, rich in prehistoric relics 

 of Dordogne, including the Vezere region. 



From Perigueux it is less than two hours 

 by train to Les Eyzies, the heart of the 

 cave-dweller country, where one stops at 

 the Auberge Berthoumeyrou, well and fa- 

 vorably known to a long line of pilgrims 

 to this enchanted land of limpid streams. 



green valleys and lofty, picturesque escarp- 

 ments. 



The calcareous formation, cleft by the 

 Vezere and its tributaries, is composed of 

 Cretaceous beds approximately horizontal 

 and of varying degrees of hardness ; so that 

 overhanging rocks often shelter horizontal 

 galleries and niches. Again subterranean 

 streams have left meandering caverns, some 

 of them sevei'al hundred meters in length. 

 These as well as the rock-shelters and open, 

 shallow caves, formed through atmospheric 

 agencies, were inhabited by early man. 

 Some were enlarged or modified and occu- 

 pied during the middle ages. At a safe 

 height in the roc de Tayac, one such that 

 withstood successive sieges in the four- 

 teenth and fifteenth centuries is at present 

 used as a restaurant and appropriately 

 named 'au Paradis. ' 



The earlier explorations at Les Eyzies, 

 Cro-Magnon, Gorge-d 'Enf er, Laugerie- 

 Basse, Laugerie-Haute, La Madeleine and 

 Le Moustier are so well known that they 

 are mentioned only in passing. After so 

 long a series of important discoveries, it 

 might well be supposed that the archeolog- 

 ical possibilities of the region had been ex- 

 hausted, yet some of the most important 

 treasures still remained locked in the re- 

 cesses of the less easily accessible and little 

 known subterranean caverns which pene- 

 trate the hills to great depths. The en- 

 trances to these caverns are small and 

 invisible from the valley below. Some, 

 indeed, Avere completely stopped by hillside 

 debris, leaving no outer trace of their ex- 

 istence. It is not strange that they escaped 

 immediate notice. They were neglected 

 until the early nineties, when Riviere re- 

 moved some of the floor deposits in the 

 cavern of Combarelles that yielded many 

 flint implements, and especially fine bone 

 needles. In 1895 he began work in similar 

 deposits in the cavern of La Mouthe. One 

 day, after penetrating to a considerable 



