lion, bear, hyæna, mammoths, and rhinoceroses were diminishing in number, and were kept at a distance. [Illustration: FIG. 72.—Back and front view of a flint implement of the Moustier type (period of the Neander Men or Middle Pliocene), half the size (linear) of the object. Observe the bulb of percussion at _b_, and the completion of one face by a single blow. Note also the fine edge and point of the weapon.] The next lower division of the Pleistocene is No. 2, the Middle Pleistocene or Last Glacial Age, or better, the =Epoch of the Mammoth=. The climate was cold and humid. For the third and last time great glaciers existed over the whole of Northern Europe, and only bits of the south of England and the central and southern parts of France were free from the ice-covering, and carried a rich vegetation. Deeper deposits in caves are of this age, and also much of the river gravels of the lower terraces of English and French rivers. By the French it is often called the Moustierian period, because it is well seen in the rich deposits of the caves and plateau of Le Moustier, on the river Vezère (an affluent of the Dordogne), which contain bones of mammoth and rhinoceros, and flint implements of a special form (Fig. 72), but no carvings or artistic work. Hyænas made some of the caverns into their dens, and the cave-lion and the cave-bear were there too. The men of this period actually contested with these carnivors for the possession of the caves, and made great fires to keep out wild beasts, as well as to grill the meat on which they fed. They were of an inferior race to the Reindeer Men, and had not such command of the situation as their successors. We find their remains, their flint weapons, and in rare cases their own bones as well as the bones of the mammoth and hairy rhinoceros (on which they fed), and the bones of their competitors, the hyænas, bears, and lions, in the deeper deposits of some caves, underlying, and separated often by calcareous deposit from, the layers which belong to the subsequent and prosperous days of the Reindeer Men. Most striking is the fact that in the layers of deposit of this older age, there are no works of art nor any implements carved from bone or ivory. These earlier men, devoid of art and living at a low level of savagery, were the Neander Men. It is in this layer and under these conditions that the few broken skulls, agreeing in shape and character with that of the Neander Valley, have been found.