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One of the best portraits is that discovered in the old cave at Laugerie Basse by M. Elie Massénat, where a very early pre-Glacial man is represented in the act of hunting an aurochs, at which he is casting a flint-tipped javelin. In this, as in all other pictures of the same epoch, I regret to say that the ancient hunter is represented in the costume of Adam before the fall.
Pommerol recently spoke at the Anthropological Society of Paris, of two such rounded stones picked up in the Puy-de-Dome. Similar stones have been discovered at Viry-Noureuil, and M. Massenat has one in his collection from Chez-Pourre.
Fossil shells were also much sought after; we have alluded to those from Champagne found in Belgium; others from the shell-marl of Touraine and Anjou had been taken into the caves of Perigord, whilst sea-urchins from the cretaceous strata of the south of France were found in a prehistoric station of Auvergne, and M. Massenat picked up at Laugerie-Basse two specimens of a species not met with anywhere but in the Eocene deposits of the isle of Wight.
Against the cliff, under the shelter of the rock, as already said, are cottages with lean-to roofs, internally with the back and with at least half the ceiling composed of the rock. In one of these Lartet and Christy began to sink a pit, beside the owner's bed, and the work was carried on to conclusion by the late Dr. Massenat.
Such depravity as this implies was then quite an exception among the cave-men, and but for the one example I have just mentioned, I have no phallic representations to refer to except the few from the Massenat collection, which were shown at the Exhibition of 1889. Fragment of a staff of office, from the Madeleine Cave.
They bear, in addition to the mark of their owner, notches of different shapes commemorating his exploits in battle or in hunting. At Solutre, MM. Ducrost and Arcelin noticed fragments of elephants' tusks, calcareous plaques, and some sandstone disks from the Trias, with notches and equidistant lines evidently having a similar purpose. Whistle from the Massenat Collection.
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