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To-day we have gone far beyond the yield of the Varrons and Columelles, and further still beyond the original pea; from the wild seeds confided to the soil by the first man who thought to scratch up the surface of the earth, perhaps with the half-jaw of a cave-bear, whose powerful canine tooth would serve him as a ploughshare!
He fled the cave-bear over the rocks full of iron ore and the promise of sword and spear; he froze to death upon a ledge of coal; he drank water muddy with the clay that would one day make cups of porcelain; he chewed the ear of wild wheat he had plucked and gazed with a dim speculation in his eyes at the birds that soared beyond his reach.
Under the skin of the civilised being there lurks almost always the ancestor, the savage contemporary of the cave-bear. True humanity does not yet exist; it is growing, little by little, created by the ferment of the centuries and the dictates of conscience; but it progresses towards the highest with heartbreaking slowness.
Had the waters once risen, even for a day, so high as to reach the level of the base of one of these cones had there been a single flood 50 or 60 feet in height since the last eruption occurred, a great part of these volcanoes must inevitably have been swept away as readily as all traces of the layer of cinders; and the accompanying bones would have been obliterated by the Rodes near Aurignac, had it risen, since the days of the mammoth, rhinoceros, and cave-bear, 50 feet above its present level.
Thus the sketch of a mammoth, showing the long hair which served to protect this animal from the cold, was found engraved upon a piece of mammoth ivory, and one of a group of reindeer on a piece of reindeer horn. There were also drawings of the cave-bear, the seal, etc., and one very interesting group showing the aurochs, a number of trees, and a man with a snake apparently biting his heel.
These implements are found not only in the alluvium as are the Chelleen COUPS DE POING, but also in the cave or rock-shelter deposits. Amongst the mammalian remains with which they are associated are those of the mammoth, the RHINOCEROS TICHORHINUS, the elk, the horse, the aurochs, the cave-lion, the cave-hyena, and the cave-bear, remarkable for the constancy of their characteristics.
From later observation I mention this as worthy the attention of paleontologists and naturalists I came to the conclusion that such creatures as the cave-bear, the cave-lion and the saber-tooth tiger, as well as the larger carnivorous reptiles make, ordinarily, two kills a day one in the morning and one after night.
There were aurochs, red deer, saber-tooth tiger, cave-bear, hyaenadon and many other examples of the fauna of Caspak done in colors, usually of four shades of brown, or scratched upon the surface of the rock. Often they were super-imposed upon each other until it required careful examination to trace out the various outlines.
He who has sat day and night, from year's end to year's end, alone with his soul in familiar discord and discourse, he who has become a cave-bear, or a treasure-seeker, or a treasure-guardian and dragon in his cave it may be a labyrinth, but can also be a gold-mine his ideas themselves eventually acquire a twilight-colour of their own, and an odour, as much of the depth as of the mould, something uncommunicative and repulsive, which blows chilly upon every passer-by.
Did palæolithic man, that antique naked crouching savage who hunted the mammoth, the reindeer, and the cave-bear among the frozen fields of interglacial Gaul and Britain did palæolithic man himself, in his rude rock-shelters, possess a knowledge of the art of pottery?
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