ages. The overleaning rock, which is separated from my temporary home only
by a few yards, probably afforded shelter to generations of those degraded
human beings from whom the anthropologist who puts no bridle on his
hobby-horse is pleased to claim descent. Near the base is one of those
symmetrically scooped-out hollows which are such a striking peculiarity
of the formation here, and which suggest to the irreverent that a
cheese-taster of prehistoric dimensions must have been brought to bear
upon the rocks when their consistency was about the same as that of fresh
gruyere. According to one theory, they were washed out by the sea, that
retired from the interior of Aquitaine long before the interesting savages
who made arrow-heads and skin-scrapers out of flints, and needles out of
bone, came to this valley and worked for M. Lartet and Mr. Christy. Others
say that the sea had nothing to do with the fashioning of these hollows,
but that they were made by the breaking and crumbling away of the more
friable parts of the limestone under the action of air, frost, and water.
While members of learned societies discuss such questions with upturned
noses, a rock above them will sometimes be unable to keep its own
countenance, but, simulating without flattery one of the human visages
below, will wear an expression of humour fiendish enough to startle the
least superstitious of men.

Upon the lower part of my rock is hanging the wild rose in flower, and
above it is a patch of grass that is already brown, although we are in the
first week of May; then upon a higher grass-grown steep is a solitary ilex,
looking more worthy of a classic reputation than many others of its race.
Its trunk appears to rise above the uppermost ridge of bare rock, and the
outspread branches, with the sombre yet glittering foliage, are marked
against the sky that is blue like the bluebell, as motionless as if they
had been fixed there by heat, like a painted tree on porcelain.