"But, alas! inauspicious days arrive." The roof of their principal cave falls in, burying their weapons and utensils, and forcing them "to fly and take up their abode in another spot. The ravages of death break in upon them.... They bear the corpse into its cavernous sepulchre; some weapons, an amulet, and perhaps an urn, form the whole of the funeral furniture. A slab of stone prevents the inroad of wild beasts. Then begins the funeral banquet, celebrated close by the abode of the dead; a fire is lighted, great animals are cut up, and portions of their smoking flesh are distributed to each. How strange the ceremonies that must then have taken place! ceremonies like those told us of the savages of the Indian and African solitudes. Imagination may easily depict the songs, the dances, and the invocations, but science is powerless to call them into life.... "But the end of this primitive age is at last come. Torrents of water break in upon the country. Its inhabitants, driven from their abodes, in vain take refuge on the lofty mountain summits. Death at last overtakes them, and a dark cavern is the tomb of the wretched beings, who, at Furfooz, were witnesses of this immense catastrophe."[67] CHAPTER X. NEOLITHIC EPOCH. The Neolithic, or Epoch of Tamed Animals, is characterized by stone implements, polished or made smooth by a process of grinding and cutting, the greater development attained in the art of pottery, and by the presence of the bones of the domesticated animals. This age, in which no remains of the reindeer occur, immediately follows the reindeer epoch, and to it are referred in general all discoveries made in the so called _alluvial_ soil, the most ancient remains of the so called Celts, the shell-heaps of Denmark, the tumuli or grave-mounds, the dolmens, the earlier Swiss pile-buildings, the Irish lake-dwellings, and some of the caves of France. _Caverns._--The caves belonging to this period, and explored by MM. Garrigou and Filhol, are those of the Pyrenees and the caves of Pradiérs, Bedeilhac, Labart, Niaux, Ussat, and Fontanel. Some of these caverns have been used in earlier ages, as is shown by the remains of extinct mammals. The upper crust of the floors of the caves belong to this period, and in them are found the bones of the ox, stag, sheep, goat, antelope, chamois, wild boar, wolf, dog, fox, badger, hare, and horse, intermingled with the remains of hearths, also piercers, spear-heads, and arrow-heads, made of bone; hatchets, knives, scrapers made of flints, and various other substances, such as silicious schist, quartzite, leptinite, and serpentine stone. These implements were carefully wrought, and mostly polished.