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ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1909.

exposure, is dry and habitable. Font-de-Gaume was never a place of residence, as is indicated by the absence of floor deposits. About the only objects found there are a few broken gravers with edges dulled in executing the wall engravings, a few pieces of ochre and manganese and one handsome ochre pencil. Why should the artists make residence of a dark subterranean cavern, when by going a short distance they could have an ample shallow cave or rock-shelter facing the south and warmed and lighted by the sun? Such a shelter is Les Eyzies, and the enormous quantities of refuse taken from its floor at various periods testify to its use as a place of habitation by generation after generation.

The rock-shelter of Les Eyzies has furnished unusually large quantities of ochre of various tints. Most of the pieces have been scraped to produce a colored powder which was mixed with grease or some liquid, thus forming a paint. In order to pulverize and thoroughly mix the coloring matter, mortars were used. An interesting series of these mortars from Les Eyzies forms a part of the famous Christy collection in the British Museum. Very few mortars have been found in neighboring stations. Besides, ochre pencils exactly like the one from Font-de-Gaume have been found in the rock- shelter of Les Eyzies. Sometimes a flat piece of ochre is cut in the form of a triangle, each angle serving in turn as a pencil point. Some of these pencils are perforated to be suspended, and might well be supposed to form a part of the outfit of the artists who drew in color figures such as that of the two-horned rhinoceros previously mentioned.

It may be that the artists who made their home at Les Eyzies decorated its walls also. Exposure would have obliterated these decorations long ago, as it did those at La Grèze, which were not protected by the floor deposits. Lucky it was for present-day lovers of art and archeology that their troglodyte forebears had the good sense to seek at Font-de-Gaume a more permanent gallery for their masterpieces.

The cavern of La Calévie belongs in the Vézère group and is situ- ated on the left side of the Petite Beune, some 500 meters below Bernifal. The cavern, which has two entrances, is 15 meters wide by 7 or 8 meters deep. Near the entrance are two engraved figures of the horse, one of them recalling the work at Les Combarelles. As the latter is Magdalenian, this is probably Magdalenian also. The other is in the style of Pair-non-Pair, which is well dated, because there the upper Aurignacian floor deposits cover the mural figures.

The rock shelter of La Grèze is only 6 kilometers above Les Eyzies, on the right bank of the main fork of the Beune. Fortunately some of its wall engravings have been protected by the floor deposits. As the latter contain an industry of Solutréan age, both the authenticity