B. Souché (_a_) in 1879 described and illustrated curious characters on the walls of the crypt of the tumulus of Lisières (Deux-Sèvres), France, some of which in execution markedly resemble several found in the United States and figured in this work.
Mr. T. Jagor (_a_) communicated a brochure in reference to the Cueva de Altamira, transmitted to him by Prof. Vilanova in Madrid: “Short notes on some prehistoric objects of the province of Santander,” in which Don Marcelino de Sautuola describes the wall pictures and other finds in the cave discovered by him at Altamira. Mr. Jagor remarks as follows on the subject:
The reproductions of the large wall pictures discovered in that cave displayed, in part, so excellent technique that the question arose how much of this excellence is to be attributed to the prehistoric artist, and how much to his modern copyist. Mr. Vilanova, who visited the cave soon after its discovery, and who regards the wall pictures as prehistoric, being about equal in age to the Danish Kjökken-möddings, states that the pictures given are pretty faithful imitations of the originals. The published drawings are all found on the ceiling of the first cave; on the walls of the subsequent caves are seen sketches of those pictures, which the artist afterwards completed. The outlines of all the drawings have been cut in the wall with coarse instruments, and nearly all the bone implements found in the cave show scratches, which render it probable that they were used for this purpose. The colors used consist merely of various kinds of ocher found in the province, without further preparation. Finally Mr. Vilanova reports that in the cave farthest back there was found, in his presence, an almost perfect specimen of _Ursus spelæus_.
Don Manuel de Góngora y Martinez (_a_) gives the account translated as follows:
The inscriptions of Fuencaliente are of great interest and importance. About one league east of the town, on a spur of the Sierra de Quintana, at the site of the Piedra Escritá, there is an almost inaccessible place, the home of wild beasts and mountain goats. Beyond the river de los Batanes and the river de las Piedras, looking toward sunset and toward the town, the artisans of a remote age cut skillfully and symmetrically with the point of the pickax into the flank of the rock and of the mountain, which is of fine flint, leaving a facade or frontispiece 6 yards in height and twice as wide, and excavating there two contiguous caves, which are wide at the mouth and end in a point, making two triangular niches polished on their four faces. On the two outer fronts to the left and right appear more than 60 symbols or hieroglyphs, written in a simple and rustic way with the index finger of a rude hand, and with a reddish bituminous pigment. The niches, about a yard and a half in height, 1 yard deep, and half a yard at the mouth, are covered by the exceedingly hard and immense rock of the mountain. There is formed, as it were, a vestibule or esplanade before the monument, and it is defended by a rampart made of the rocks torn from the niches, strengthened with juniper, oaks, and cork trees. The half-moon, the sun, an ax, a bow and arrows, an ear of corn, a heart, a tree, two human figures, and a head with a crown stand out among those signs, the foreshadowings of primitive writing.