somewhat rude handicraft of my prehistoric Phidias the
horse of the quaternary epoch had much the same caudal peculiarity; his
tail was bushy, but only in the lower half. He was still in the
intermediate stage between horse and donkey, a natural mule still
struggling up aspiringly toward perfect horsehood. In all other matters
the two creatures--the cave man's horse and Prjevalsky's--closely agree.
Both display large heads, thick necks, coarse manes, and a general
disregard of 'points' which would strike disgust and dismay into the
stout breasts of Messrs. Tattersall. In fact over a T.Y.C. it may be
confidently asserted, in the pure Saxon of the sporting papers, that
Prjevalsky's and the cave man's lot wouldn't be in it. Nevertheless a
candid critic would be forced to admit that, in spite of clumsiness,
they both mean staying.

So much for the two sitters; now let us turn to the artist who sketched
them. Who was he, and when did he live? Well, his name, like that of
many other old masters, is quite unknown to us; but what does that
matter so long as his work itself lives and survives? Like the Comtists
he has managed to obtain objective immortality. The work, after all, is
for the most part all we ever have to go upon. 'I have my own theory
about the authorship of the Iliad and Odyssey,' said Lewis Carroll (of
'Alice in Wonderland') once in Christ Church common room: 'it is that
they weren't really written by Homer, but by another person of the same
name.' There you have the Iliad in a nutshell as regards the
authenticity of great works. All we know about the supposed Homer (if
anything) is that he was the reputed author of the two unapproachable
Greek epics; and all we know directly about my old master, viewed
personally, is that he once carved with a rude flint flake on a fragment
of reindeer horn these two clumsy prehistoric horses. Yet by putting two
and two together we can make, not four, as might be naturally expected,
but a fairly connected history of the old master himself and what Mr.
Herbert Spencer would no doubt playfully term 'his environment.'

The work of art was dug up from under the firm concreted floor of a cave
in the Dordogne. That cave was once inhabited by the nameless artist
himself, his wife, and family. It had been previously tenanted by
various other early families, as well as by bears, who seem to have
lived there in the intervals between the different human occupiers.
Probably the bears eje