CONCLUSION. 553 



where M. Hamy has met with skulls, " the ethnical relation of 

 which with the old man of Cro-Magnon is beyond discussion. 

 On the other hand, some points of comparison, unfortunately 

 very few in number, have led him to regard the Dalecarlians 

 (Sweden) as connected with the same stock. . . . They (the 

 reindeer -hunters of Perigord) were perhaps only a branch of 

 an African population which had emigrated to France with the 

 hyaena, the lion, the hippopotamus, etc. In this case there is 

 no difficulty in explaining its existence at the present day in 

 the north-west of Africa, and in the islands, where it would be 

 protected from crossing. Some of its tribes carried away in the 

 pursuit of the reindeer will have preserved in the Scandinavian 

 Alps the tall form, the dark hair, and brown complexion which 

 distinguish Dalecarlians from the neighbouring populations ; 

 others, mixing with all the races by which France has been 

 successively invaded, only betray their ancient existence by 

 the phenomena of atavism, which lays upon some individuals 

 the mark of the old hunters of Perigord." 1 On a question 

 such as that which MM. Quatrefages and Hamy discuss — 

 the racial characters of Palaeolithic and Neolithic remains — 

 I have no title to express an opinion. I can only say that 

 so far as the geological evidence goes, it seems to favour to 

 some extent their general conclusion. It is quite clear that a 

 wide interval separates the Palaeolithic and the Neolithic Ages 

 everywhere in Central and North-western Europe ; but it is less 

 certain that this interval was as prolonged in the south of 

 France. Possibly, therefore, the Palaeolithic and the Neolithic 

 races may have commingled in Perigord at a time when the 

 reindeer was still living, but in greatly diminished numbers, in 

 the valleys of the Pyrenees. But there is nothing to show 

 that any of the Palaeolithic tribes were "carried away in the 

 pursuit of the reindeer" to its present home in Scandinavia. 

 A prolonged period intervened between the close of the Ice Age 

 and the reappearance of man in Central and North-western 

 Europe. Glacial conditions had vanished, and the arctic and 

 1 De Quatrefages, The Human Species, p. 335. 



