Les Cavernes et leurs Habitants

Abstract

THE exploration of caverns during the twenty years which have passed since the publication of “Cave Hunting,” has been carried on with an ever-increasing-interest in various parts of the world. In France M. Martel has proved, by his adventurous descents into the abysses of these great laboratories of nature, that there is a charm in exploring them, similar to that which attracts the traveller to the highest summits of the mountains. If any one doubts this, let him read “Les Abîmes,” where he will find a tale of descents into the principal European caverns that will remind him of the Alpine Journal turned upside down. In Central America the “Hill Caves of Yucatan” have allured Mr. Mercer to an expedition, the results of which have been recently published with admirable photographs. Here, as generally if not universally in the American caves, we look in vain for any traces of man older than the ancestors of the Indian tribes. In the book before us Prof. Fraipont, who had already made his mark as one of the discoverers of the human remains in the cave of Spy, deals with the general questions shortly and popularly, and with ample illustrations.

Les Cavernes et leurs Habitants.

Par Julien Fraipont. Fcap. 8vo, pp. viii + 334. (Paris: Baillière et Fils, 1896.)