ople made for themselves
convenient sheltering places under the cover of some great overhanging
rock. In various places in France such resorts have been discovered. The
name of "rock shelters" has been given to such resorts. In such places,
where we may suppose they built rude huts, are found rich deposits of
the bones of mammals, birds, and fishes, as well implements of bone and
horn.

We have frequently referred to the presence of hearths, showing that
they used fire. Like other rude races, it is probable that they obtained
fire by the friction of one piece of wood upon another. M. Dupont found
in one of the Belgium caves a piece of iron pyrites, from which, with a
flint, sparks could be struck.

Speculations have been indulged as to the probable condition of man
before he obtained a knowledge of fire. If the acquisition of fire be
regarded as one of the results of human endeavor, it must surely be
classed as one of the most valuable discoveries which mankind has made.
We do not believe, however, that we shall ever discover relics of races
or tribes of men so low in the scale as to be ignorant of the use of
fire. Even some of the flints which M. Bourgeois would refer to the
Miocene Age show evidence of its action.<18>

Full-page picture of Rock Shelter at Bruniquel.-----------

The men of the Caves supported life by hunting. But a very small part
of their food supplies could have been drawn from the vegetable kingdom.
When the climate was so severe that Alpine mosses grew at Schussenreid,
acorns and like nuts would be about all they could procure from that
source. The animals hunted by the Cave-men were principally reindeer,
horses, bisons, and, occasionally mammoths and woolly rhinoceros. But
they were not very choice in this matter, as they readily accepted as
food any animal they could obtain by force or cunning. Wolves and foxes
were not rejected, and in one cave large numbers of the bones of the
common water rat were obtained. We know what animals were used as food,
because we find their bones split for the purpose of procuring the
marrow they contained. This was evidently to them a nutritious article
of diet, since they were careful to open all the bones containing it,
and bones so split are frequently the only means of detecting the former
presence of man in some bone caves.

We must not forget that at that time the shore of the Atlantic Ocean,
during a large part of the Paleolithic Age, was situated m