the great dust-storms and deposition of 'loess' after the second and third glaciations prevailed again in western Europe after the fourth glaciation. This gave rise to deposits of what is known among geologists as the 'newer loess,' and we find these sheets of 'newer loess' spreading immediately above the Mousterian culture at a number of different points in western Europe. When the Crô-Magnon race entered this part of Europe the climate was becoming more dry and stimulating; the summers were warm or temperate, the winters very severe. Great ice-caps still spread over the Scandinavian peninsula and also over the Alps, but the borders of the ice-fields no longer reached the plains; in a sense, the Glacial Epoch had not yet closed, for during the whole period of Postglacial time the glaciers of the Alps, beginning in early Magdalenian times, developed three renewed advances, each somewhat less vigorous than the preceding one, with intervening stages of a drier climate. [Illustration: FIG. 137. 'Tectiforms'--schematic drawings in lines and dots believed to represent huts and larger shelters built of logs and covered with hides. From the walls of the cavern of _Font-de-Gaume_, Dordogne. After Breuil.] The greater number of the Aurignacian stations, like those of Mousterian times, were under the shelters or within the entrances of the grottos and caverns; all the stations in southwestern France are of this character. There was, however, a great open camp at Solutré, which was a most famous hunting station for the wild horse in Aurignacian times. In northern France there are several open stations, such as those of Montières and St. Acheul, along the River Somme, and to the east, along the middle Rhine, there are several open 'loess' stations, such as those of Achenheim, Völklinshofen, Rhens, and Metternich. It may very well be that these open stations were visited only during the mild summer season. The continued choice of sites which naturally afforded the greatest protection from the weather, in France, Britain, Belgium, and all along the Danube, as well as in the genial region of the Riviera, is a sure indication of a prevailing severe climate. It is hardly possible, however, that the closed or protected stations were the only residences of these people; they merely indicate the points where the flint industry was continuously carried on and also the vast foyers and gathering places; but there is little doubt from the evidence afforded by the signs on the walls of the caverns, known as 'tectiforms,' that huts and large shelters built of logs and covered with hides were grouped around most of these stations and scattered through the country at points favorable for hunting and fishing. These would be the only dwelling-places possible in such vast open camps, for example, as Solutré. CLIMATE AND LIFE OF AURIGNACIAN TIMES