_ 1891.) Archeology and Ethnology. 501 
of the art works of the period. He said that the most ancient pieces 
of flint were worked in an elegant form ; a perception of the beautiful 
was evident. There was an extension of art during the Madelenien 
epoch ; the sculpture first, and engraving afterwards. Each prehistoric 
station in that country had its particular style or manifestation of art. 
Along the river Vezere the horses engraved in relief are represented 
with such enormous heads as to be veritable caricatures. In the 
Pyrenees, at the Grotte Gourdan and Lortet, numerous beautiful 
engravings were found. The artists of Lourdes and the Grotte Arudy 
had invented the volute, the spiral, and different designs which were 
not encountered at any other place. The sculptors of Mas d’Azil 
sought out imaginary, apparently mythological beings. Man at that 
time had the leisure to pursue his own imagination, the opportunity to 
indulge his love for the beautiful according to the best means that art 
presented. M. Piette presented different engravings of the reindeer 
in certain positions and conditions sustaining his theory. He also 
exhibited the advance sheets of his great work on art during this age, 
and showed by chromo-lithography the reproduction of a great number 
of objects engraved and sculptured. 
M. Montelius asked if the spiral exhibited by M. Piette as from 
d’Arudy did not belong to the age of iron ; that it would beso if found 
in his country, 
M. Cartailhac responded on behalf of M. Piette that he had assisted 
in its find; that there was no doubt of its authenticity; that it was 
made out of the bone of a reindeer, and its contemporaneity with that 
age was indisputable. 
One of the objects presented by M. Piette he declared to be a sphinx 
or winged quadruped. Le Baron de Baye was surprised that it was 
found in a deposit of the stone age. But M. Cartailhac responded 
that it required much imagination to determine or say that it was a 
sphinx. It was incomplete, and the wings were more than doubtful, 
and he denied largely the propositions advanced by M. = ee 
Praising him for his exceedingly valuable excavations 
M. Gabriel de Mortillet also opposed the ioei of M. Piette 
upon the subject of the demonstration of the reindeer and the horse. 
Monsieur Fraipont ranged himself on the side of Mortillet, and he 
criticized mercilessly the fantastic idea that the artist studied art in the 
same way that the schools were now conducted at the Academy of 
Beaux Arts, or in the studios of the great painters of Paris. He declared - 
it to be a common error which substituted for the prehistoric man the 
‘cultivated, educated artists of the nineteenth century, making the 
