A little everywhere in France and elsewhere, we hurry to come and observe the strange relics of bygone days: stone tools, questioning skulls, faceless vertebrates ... 
 The caves in the south of France then became an Eldorado for a whole generation of pioneers. Lle Muséum de Toulouse, when it opened in 1865, was proud to be one of the first to exhibit these resounding discoveries in its new "gallery of Caverns". 
 From yesterday to today, by tracing the portrait of some of its actors, by sketching the history of the ideas which animate them as the progress of an institution which gave itself the vocation of being its receptacle, this collective work attempts to reproduce the story of a great scientific adventure still current, that of the conquest of Prehistory.