. Archæology and false antiquities. ethnologiques, in which he describes anumber of systematic falsifications. From this articleare culled the following instances of forgery as havingoccurred on French territory. One of the most famous is that of M. Meillet, ofPoitiers, who, though a man of education and a dis-tinguished chemist, had become possessed of a mania ^ Loc. cit., p. 91. 38 ARCHEOLOGY AND FALSE ANTIQUITIES for mystifications—*Mon plus grand plaisir, avouait-ilcyniquement, est de foutre dedans les savants. TheGrotte du Chaffaiid (\f\ere.), the first which furnished anauthentic sculptu
. Archæology and false antiquities. ethnologiques, in which he describes anumber of systematic falsifications. From this articleare culled the following instances of forgery as havingoccurred on French territory. One of the most famous is that of M. Meillet, ofPoitiers, who, though a man of education and a dis-tinguished chemist, had become possessed of a mania ^ Loc. cit., p. 91. 38 ARCHEOLOGY AND FALSE ANTIQUITIES for mystifications—*Mon plus grand plaisir, avouait-ilcyniquement, est de foutre dedans les savants. TheGrotte du Chaffaiid (\f\ere.), the first which furnished anauthentic sculptured bone of the Palseolithic period, hadbecome a favourite and fertile source of this class ofantiquities. Meillet, along with a friend of the name ofA. Brouillet, directed his attention to this cave, and con-ducted excavations in it, the result of which was pub-lished in the autumn of 1864, under the title of Epoquesantediluviennes et celtiques du Poitoii, an octavo volumewith fifty plates. These plates represented, among some. Fig. 4. Elephant from Chaffaud by Meillet {\) ordinary relics characteristic of the later Palceolithicperiod, a number of objects so strange and grotesquethat they at once attracted attention and roused suspicionas to their genuineness. Fragments of bone found inthe cave had carved on them figures of animals in a styleof art totally unlike, and much inferior to, that of theauthentic specimens. For example, the mammoth, repre-sented by Fig. 4, will be at once pronounced a gross
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