THE MEDITERRANEAN NATE BALIN'! 
198 
This region formerly had an evil reputation for 
sterility and aridity. It now has forty-three 
oases scattered over it, containing 520,000 palm 
trees and 100,000 fruit trees. The dates produced 
there are of a very superior quality, almost as j 
delicious as those of the Tunisian Belud-el Dj- rid, 
and their value is estimated at the rate of 35 
per kilo (about lid per pound), or 2i millic n francs 
per annum, which are, to a large extent, sent to 
France by parcel post. 
Below the whole valley of Waddy R’hir and for 
some hundreds'of miles to the south of it, alongside 
the immensely wide bed of the so-called “stream” 
(Arabic, I garc/har ,) a subterranean current of wa- 
ter runs, only requiring to be reached by boring, 
and thus opening up the glorious perspective of a 
vast extension of this colonisation. It has been 
said that the date is for the desert what cereals 
are for Europe, and what rice is for India and 
China, and what maize is for America. It is for 
the inhabitants their chief food, their most certain 
product, the prime object of consumption and 
exchange. Dates alone, however, are not suffi- 
ciently nutritive, hence the cultivator’s need of 
exchanging cereals.. 
Prehistoric Man in the Mediterranean. 
The recent further discovery of prehistoric hu- 
man remains in one of the caves near Mentone 
has agitated the scientific world in France and 
elsewhere. 
As described in a previous article, they point to 
a race of a very degraded type, evidently of the 
palaeolithic period, or before the age of metals. A 
correspondent, says the Globe, has just had an 
interview with M. Bonfils, the intelligent curator 
of the Mentone Museum, who is ready on all occa- 
sions to impart his views on the subject of these 
wonderful discoveries. 
M. Bonfils has been associated from the very 
beginning with the researches in this locality, 
dating back some thirty years, and his opinions, 
therefore, are of the greatest value. He admits, 
that to fix the exact date when these human 
beings existed is practically impossible, Savants 
in France are not all so modest in their 
views. One, in particular, wimse name is well 
! known in the scientific world, lays down the 
I law absolutely that all remains found of the palae- 
olithic period must be quite a hundred thousand 
years old! Those of the neolithic he calculates to 
be fifty thousand years, and so on to a paltry ten 
thousand, after which the days of the Pharohs, 
and certainly those of the Romans, seem scarcely 
worth anything. M. Bonfils is disposed to think 
that all these calculations are based on insufficient 
data, although he is not at all sure that they are 
in any way exaggerated. 
What is certain is that the existence of these 
cave-men must have been at an extremely remote 
period, and that, from the formation of their 
skulls, they were of a decidedly degraded and ani- 
mal nature. Four out of the five principal cams 
have, from time to time, been thoroughly exami- 
ned, as may be seen by the specimens in the mu- 
seum, both human and animal. 
The fifth cave is virtually intact, and will, no 
doubt, at some future time be thoroughly explo- 
red, and with the experience gained in the past, 
with, probably, still more satisfactory results. 
Our correspondent mentions one fact in connec- 
tion with M. Bonfils which will exemplify his 
practical character and the way in which he has 
set to work to prove some of his views. M. Bon- 
fils stated that on many occasions he had over- 
heard visitors pointing to various stone imple- 
ments and asserting that, according to certain 
savants, they must have taken years of patient 
toil to make, and probably had been handed down 
from father to son before they were completed. 
M. Bonfils, to prove the fallacy of this theory, 
proceeded to place himself exactly in the position, 
of one of these prehistoric aborigines, and without 
any tools except those pro\ idee! by nature succeed- 
ed in making replicas of every conceivable Mint 
and bone weapon or implement which has ever 
been discovered. To be quite fair, he has not 
allowed himself even a chair to sit on, or a pair of 
spectacles to protect his eyes when at work and 
when the particles of flint have been flying about 
his face. He has received many a wound, but 
nothing of a serious character, and the results of 
Lis labour are full of interest. His hardest work 
seems to have been to pierce the holes for his 
hammer heads to receive their handles when made 
