II. We have already seen that the Cro-Magnon race was discovered immediately above that of Canstadt in the alluvial deposits of Grenelle. It is therefore very old, and was contemporary with the great mammals, now either extinct or emigrated. More sociable, doubtless, and more settled than the preceding race, it inhabited caverns where it left numerous specimens of its handiwork; it buried its dead under the shelters where they are now found. A great number of eminent investigators have explored these _scientific quarries_. I cannot enumerate them all here, but there is one name, the omission of which would be unpardonable, that, namely, of Edouard Lartet. It is well known with what persevering intelligence, sometimes alone, sometimes accompanied by his friend Christy, this man, as modest as he is learned, has explored these caves, what treasures he has obtained from them, and the prudence and sagacity which he showed in the interpretation of his splendid discoveries, and only justice was done to him in awarding him the title of _founder of human palæontology_. Thanks to him, and to those who have followed in his steps, we possess the essential elements of a history of the Cro-Magnon race. Almost without leaving this valley of the Vézère, the name of which stands so high in anthropology, we can, as M. Broca has done, follow it step by step. In fact, from the village of Les Eyzies to the rock-shelter of Moustier, within a distance of from seven to eight miles we meet with no less than eight human settlements, all of which have become more or less celebrated from the different records which they have furnished. They are the _Moustier_ cavern, the _Moustier_ shelter, the shelter of _La Madeleine_, the _Cro-Magnon_ shelter and burial-place, the _Laugerie-Haute_ shelter, the _Laugerie-Basse_ shelter, the _Gorge d’Enfer_ cavern, and the _Les Eyzies_ cavern. The most ancient, that of Moustier, is connected by its fauna with the lower alluvium (bas niveaux) of Grenelle, and dates at least from the close of the age of the bear; that of La Madeleine cannot be placed much before the present epoch. Between these two extremes are ranged the other six, and altogether they mark out, so to speak, the two last periods of the quaternary ages. Yet to obtain a clear idea of the social and intellectual development of the race, to learn how far it complied with the modifications of the climate, and what progress or what decadence these modifications imposed upon it, we must consult the evidences which it has left in many other localities, and especially in the caves and shelters of Bruniquel, in the burial-places of Solutré, in the caves of Gourdan, Duruty, and of L’Homme-Mort, etc.