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242 their physical and cultural characteristics? These problems open up a wide field of facts, theories and speculative inferences, utterly beyond the modest scope of this book. We can only hope to call attention to a few guiding landmarks. Our first object is to find a few inhabited sites disclosing the physical characters of the Palæolithic people and the brachycephalic hordes who, from time to time, found their way into Europe from Eastern lands, before their respective racial characters became blended by marriage and social intercourse.

M. Dupont describes the Trou du Frontal as the burying-place of the reindeer-hunters inhabiting the Trou des Nutons—the latter being a large cavern situated about 200 metres lower down the valley. The former is a small recess at the end of a rock-shelter which had in front of it deposits containing relics of different ages. The cavity measured two metres in depth and one metre in height and breadth, and contained the remains of sixteen human skeletons, five being those of children. The bones were disconnected before being deposited, as none was in its normal anatomical position. A human jaw, for instance, had been broken into two portions. One portion, having a whitish appearance, lay in one part of the vault, and the other, having a brown colour, was found at some distance from the former, but yet, when brought together, the portions fitted exactly. A large