AMONG THE VOLCANOS AND GLACIERS OF AUVERGNE. 21 
and follows the windings of the old river, whose gravels may be 
seen along its course. Here and there this lava is columnar, 
and the granite itself appears to be in places traversed by dykes 
of basalt. The situation of the old town of Champeix is very 
picturesque, on a commanding eminence at the mouth of the 
gorge, which is crowned with the massive remains of an old 
castle. At Nechers the lava from Tartaret stops, having flowed 
fourteen miles down the river channel. Near Nechers the river 
has cut through a fine section of the freshwater beds over which 
the Tartaret lava has flowed in the gorge. Before entering 
Issoire we arrive at the Montague de Perrier, with its rock 
dwellings “ Les Grottes de Perrier,” which are referred to 
Roman times. The Mont Perrier tuffs and conglomerates are 
famous for their rich bone breccias, containing the remains of 
a great number of animals which appear to have lived in this 
country in pliocene times. It is difficult to account for these con- 
glomerates, and those of Champeix and Nechers, save that they 
were carried to their present site by a river which flowed in the 
same direction as the Couze. From the Mont Perrier conglo- 
merates have been extracted the remains of bears, tigers, 
hyaenas and otters, beavers and hares, associated with masto- 
dons, rhinoceroses, stags, and tapirs, and they lie in gravels and 
drifts which are interstratified in beds of tuft* conglomerate 
which were laid down at a period long after the miocene volcano 
of Mont Dore had burst into activity, when the tuffs and lavas 
it erupted had been borne for miles down valleys, when the 
old miocene lakes had been turned into dry land, and deep 
valleys eroded in their silts. Verily this is an astounding 
country, this Auvergne. It will take years yet to compre- 
hend its geology. Much as has been done by Scrope, Lecoq, 
and others, there is still far more to do before its dry bones are 
sorted, its different volcanic outbursts defined, and the strange 
history they have to tell is revealed. No one has, as yet, an 
idea of the wonderful physical changes which have occurred 
during eocene, miocene, pliocene, and post-pliocene ages, which 
we doubt not will be more or less realised by future geologists. 
No one has as yet separated the Gannat beds and those of 
Le Puy en Velay, with their eocene fauna, from the miocene 
strata crowded with the relics of miocene animals. No one 
knows under what condition the pliocene animals lived when 
the Mont Perrier tuffs were accumulating ; or what the con- 
ditions were when the mammoth and long-haired rhinoceros and 
marmot lived on the Monts Dome. Still there is some light 
shed upon all these histories, and if after three visits to the 
volcanic regions of Central France I may be permitted to give 
a broad opinion as to the glacial history of Auvergne, I should 
say that it was long, long ago. When the Alpine glaciers 
