[Illustration: FIG. 3.–_A._ Perforated harpoon of the Azilian or Red-Deer period, made from antler of red deer, found in quantity in the upper layers of deposit in the cavern of the Mas d'Azil (Arriège). _B_ and _C_. Imperforate harpoons or lance heads made from reindeer antler of the Magdalenian period (Reindeer epoch). _B_ from Bruniquel Cave (Tarn-et-Garonne). _C_ from a cavern in the Hautes Pyrénées. Same size as the objects.] A very natural tendency among those who hear from time to time something of what is being discovered about primitive man is to confuse all the periods and races of prehistoric man together, and so picture to themselves one ideal "primitive man." My friend Mr. Rudyard Kipling does this, although it would be no further from a true conception were he to blend his ancient Britons, his Phenicians, his Romans, his Saxons, his Normans, and a few Hindoos into one imaginary man and represent him as taking a coloured photograph of the Druids of Stonehenge on a piece of Egyptian papyrus. Here is Mr. Kipling's vision of primitive man: Once on a glittering icefield, ages and ages ago, Ung, a maker of pictures, fashioned an image of snow. Later he pictured an aurochs, later he pictured a bear– Pictured the sabre-tooth tiger dragging a man to his lair– Pictured the mountainous mammoth, hairy, abhorrent, alone– Out of the love that he bore them, scribing them clearly on bone, Straight on the glittering icefield, by the caves of the lost Dordogne, Ung, a maker of pictures, fell to his scribing on bone. The fact is that several prehistoric races have succeeded one another in Western Europe during the immensely long period–amounting to hundreds of thousands of years–during which man existed before the dawn of history. The "lost" or "prehistoric Dordogne" was like the present historic Dordogne in regard to the fact that many races and dynasties successively held possession of it and left their work in its soil and caves.