in which were embedded quantities of land shells (Helix nemoralis), evidently the remains of repasts. These shell-heaps were intercalated between the layers of ashes, and extended over several yards, with a maximum depth of about one foot. In this bed were also found harpoons and other relics similar to those in the bed of coloured pebbles; but in addition to these there were portions of small chisel-like implements of stone with sloping and abraded ends (Fig. 19, No. 6), but no regular stone axes. Only in the super- incumbent layers were the latter found, where, still higher up, came objects of bronze and iron.
According to M. Piette there were changes in the external environment which could be correlated with these successive deposits of human occupancy. As the Reindeer period passed away, the climate became ameliorated but humid, as inferred from the presence of fruit-trees and the cultivation of grain. The people appeared to have lost their artistic taste for carving on bones, as they now manufactured harpoons of red-deer horn without a trace of ornament. They also painted selected pebbles with quaint devices of lines and round spots, and practised some obscure sepulchral rites in which the spreading of ochre on the desiccated bones seemed to play a part.
But the chief interest in the discoveries at Mas-d'Azil lies in the harpoons of red-deer horn, the real significance of which had then
