The earliest types(14) of the incipient Magdalenian culture, or PROTO-MAGDALENIAN, are nowhere better represented than under the great shelter of Placard, in Charente, where the deep successive deposits compel a realization of the long period of time required for the evolution of the Magdalenian with its wonderful artistic culmination. Even prior to any discovery of the harpoon or of any example of the art of engraving comparable to the classic series of higher levels we find three levels of incipient Magdalenian industry at Placard. Similar local horizons, recognizable from the type of their javelin points (_sagaies_) and from their decorative _motifs_, are also found at Kesslerloch, Switzerland, and as far east as Poland. From Dordogne they extend into the Pyrenees and into the Cantabrian Mountains of northern Spain, but not farther south. There is thus a very primitive Magdalenian industry wide-spread over central and western Europe, either autochthonous or influenced from the east, but certainly not from the Mediterranean. It is only above these primitive horizons that layers are discovered with the rudimentary harpoons, and then with the perfected harpoons with single and double rows of barbs. It would appear as if the basins drained by the Dordogne and the Garonne were at once the most densely populated and also the centres from which industry, culture, and art spread to the east and to the west. In the heart of the Dordogne region is the great rock shelter of La Madeleine, the type station of Magdalenian culture, and around it are no less than fifteen stations. This station, in which the lowest industrial layer (_niveau inférieur_) is subsequent to the Proto-Magdalenian phase and belongs to the _early_ Magdalenian, was extensively excavated by Lartet and Christy(15) during the decade following its discovery, in 1865, and more recently by Peyrony and others. The industrial deposit is situated at the base of an overhanging limestone escarpment on the right bank of the Vézère River; it extends for a distance of 50 feet with an average thickness of 9 feet, the lowest or early Magdalenian levels reaching down below the present level of the Vézère. It is a significant fact that the river floods which from time to time occur here also occasionally drove out the flint workers in Magdalenian times. It indicates an unchanged topography and similar conditions of rainfall. We must picture this cliff fringed with a northern flora, these river banks as the haunt of bison and reindeer, and the site of a long, narrow camp of skin-covered shelters.