150 
ELEMENTS OE GEOLOGY. 
flint implements of a very antique type. But there are some 
caves in the departments of Dordogne, Aude, and other parts 
of the south of France, which are believed by M. Lartet to be 
of intermediate date between the Paleolithic and Neolithic 
periods. To this inteiimediate era M. Lartet gave, in 1863, 
the name of the “reindeer period,” because vast quantities 
of the bones and horns of that deer have been met with in 
the French caverns. In some cases separate plates of molars 
of the mammoth, and several teeth of the great Irish deer, 
Cervus megaceros^ and of the cave-lion, Felis spelma^ have been 
found mixed up with cut and carved bones of reindeer. On 
one of these sculptured bones in the cave of Perigord, a rude 
representation of the mammoth, with its long curved tusks 
and covering of wool, occurs, which is regarded by M. Lartet 
as placing beyond all doubt the fact that the early inhabit¬ 
ants of these caves must have seen this species of elephant 
still living in France. The presence of the marmot, as well 
as the reindeer and some other northern animals, in these 
caverns seems to imply a colder climate than that of the 
Swiss lake-dwellings, in which no remains of reindeer have 
as yet been discovered. The absence of this last in the old 
lacustrine habitations of Switzerland is the more signiflcant, 
because'in a cave in the neighborhood of the lake of Geneva, 
namely, that of Mont Saleve, bones of the reindeer occur with 
flint implements similar to those of the caverns of Dordogne 
and Perigord. 
The state, of the arts, as exemplified by the instruments 
found in these caverns of the reindeer period, is somewhat 
more advanced than that which characterizes the tools of 
the Amiens drift, but is nevertheless more rude than that of 
the Swiss lake-dwellings. No metallic articles occur, and 
the stone hatchets are not ground after the fashion of celts; 
the needles of bone are shaped in a w^orkmanlike style, hav¬ 
ing their eyes drilled with consummate skill. 
The formations above alluded to, which are as yet but im¬ 
perfectly known, may be classed as belonging to the close 
of the Paleolithic era, of the monuments of which I am now 
about to treat. 
Alluvial Deposits of the Paleolithic Age. —The alluvial and 
marine deposits of the Paleolithic age, the earliest to which 
any vestiges of man have yet been traced back, belong to a 
time when the physical geography of Europe differed in a 
marked degree from that now prevailing. In the Neolithic 
period, the valleys and rivers coincided almost entirely with 
those by which the present drainage of the land is effected, 
and the peat-mosses were the same as those now growing* 
