The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-09-19
PREHISTORIC CARVINGS IN
 CAVE.

Tn a letter addressed to the secretary of the French Academy of Sciences the well-known anthropologist M. E. Ri- viere announces that, in the course of a mission confided to him by the ministry of public instruction, he has discovered in the department of the Dordogne a prehistoric cave. of which he has ex- plored one hundred and twenty seven metres. It's walls are covered with drawings of animals These drawings are covered cut deep in the rock, some of them being buried under stalag- mites. This fact is, according to M, Riviere most important, as it consti- tutes an undeniable proof of the great antiquity of the drawings in question.
 The caves of the Dordogne have for | some forty years been noted for their relics of a very early race of men, They were first explored by M. Lartet of France, and our fellow-countryman MT. Christy, whose fine collection is now in the British Museum; but the one recently examined by M. Riviere appears to be of exceptional size and interest The special interest-if, ln- deed, 1t be not uflique--of M. Riviere's discovery is that he has found some kind of incised ornamentation upon the actual walls of a cave. These carvings are sometimes covered by a film of sta lagmite, which shows them to De very far from modern; the patterns, how ever, of the engravings will be yet more satisfactory proof of their anti l ouity; for the style of ornamentation practiced by tbisfolk is not so familiar 1 to experts that they can recognize It | without difficulty Both the objects | depicted and the materials employed throw considerable light upon the con- | dition of western Europe at this early | age The antlers of reindeer are com monly used for tools and ornaments, and the bones of this animal abound in | the debris on the floors. Obviously. 1t must then have been as common in Pe- rigod as it now is in the extreme north of Asia or America.
 This fact, taking into consideration the present range of the animal, and remembering the habits of the people, indicates that in those days central France cannot have had 8 climate more genial than that of northern Norway at the present era In addition to these animals, the red deer, the Irish elk, the wild horse, the glutton, and, possibly
 the rhinoceros are depicted: but the most interesting sketch of all is fairly accurate and rather spirited outline ot | a mammoth scratched on a. piece Of a tusk-these figures sometimes are ac- tually sculptured as if to form the ham, dies of knives or of tools of some kind
 but in other cases, as in the last named, they are incised on the flat ol curved surface of bone or of an ant Ter. Remains of the cave-lion anc cave bear have been found, though not abundantly, together with those of thE
 hyena, the ibex, the chamois, and the
 saiga antelope, which now inhabit tho
 plains of the Volga and southern Sibe
 ria. These men of the Dordogne hao probably attained to stage of civiliza
 ton comparable with that of the Els
 quimaux before they were brought intt
 contact with Europeans, and there is st
 strong a family likeness in the hand1
 work of the two that Professor Boyt
 Dawkins, who has paid much attention
 to the subject, Is of opinion that th'
 Esquimaux are the nearest approach t'
 descendants and representatives ot thu long-lost race As comparatively fev
 bones of the Dordogne folk nave Deel
 identified with certainty up to tn
 present time, we are hardly in a posi-
 ton to say what anatomical evidenc
 there is for this view; but, so far as
 goes, it is avorable.-London Stand
 ard.