PEIMEVAL MAN. 627 



gravel-deposits ; 2, the ossiferous caves. The former, handled 

 with the severe caution of Mr. Prestwich, carries man furthest 

 back in time, and with the greatest certainty ; but it is of 

 the most meagre and restricted character, consisting merely 

 of flint-weapons or implements, hardly ranging beyond a few 

 patterns. Not a single instance has yet occurred of a frag- 

 ment even of an unquestionably authentic human bone 

 having turned up in these deposits. On the other hand, the 

 evidence yielded by the caves, although less certain as an 

 index of remote time, is infinitely more varied and instruc- 

 tive. It tells us, in certain cases, the division of the human 

 race to which man, the early tenant of the caves, probably 

 belonged ; what was his stature and what his physical 

 powers ; what the animals which were his contemporaries ; 

 what the molluscs, fish, flesh, and fowl upon which he fed ; 

 that he cooked his meat by fire : that he extracted the marrow 

 from the bones, and how he did it ; how and with what 

 weapons he killed his game ; how he flayed and dressed the 

 hides ; that he scraped the meat off the bones ; that he 

 carefully cut the sinews of his slaughtered deer for harpoon- 

 lines, or for the fibre of sewing thread for his fine-pointed 

 pierced needles ; where and in what direction he cut the 

 sinews ; what the implements and weapons — in stone, bone, 

 and deer's horn — which he used ; what his ornaments ; and 

 how he disposed of his dead. It is now beginning to en- 

 lighten us on what he was capable of achieving in the way of 

 art, and that in music he had got the initial length of a bone 

 whistle limited to a single note. The cave evidence has been 

 disparaged by cursory observers and light reasoners, upon 

 the grounds that the caves have been occupied at different 

 times, and their contents often disturbed by the latest tenants, 

 thus forming what are called remanie deposits. But the short- 

 comings lay with the objectors themselves. When the 

 profound palseontological knowledge, rare sagacity, and phi- 

 losophic caution of M. Lartet are applied to what were 

 sources of doubt and embarrassment to them, the supposed 

 difficulties are converted into aids in unravelling the tangled 

 clue, and into indices of ulterior truths. In short, beside the 

 bare fact that primeval man existed during the early ' Fluvi- 

 atile Drift period in Europe,' all that we know of him — 

 exclusive of the later 'kitchen-middens,' and ' pile -habita- 

 tions ' — is derived solely and entirely from the ossiferous 

 caves. 



The caverns which, on this occasion, were the objects of 

 exploration by M. Lartet and Mr. Henry Christy, occur in 

 the department of the Dordogne (the ancient province of 



s s 2 



