nly have been acquired by people who knew the animal in
its domesticated state; they declare that the cave man was obviously
horsey. But all the indications seem to me to show that tame animals
were quite unknown in the age of the cave men. The mammoth certainly was
never domesticated; yet there is a famous sketch of the huge beast upon
a piece of his own ivory, discovered in the cave of La Madelaine by
Messrs. Lartet and Christy, and engraved a hundred times in works on
archaeology, which forms one of the finest existing relics of pre-Glacial
art. In another sketch, less well known, but not unworthy of admiration,
the early artist has given us with a few rapid but admirable strokes his
own reminiscence of the effect produced upon him by the sudden onslaught
of the hairy brute, tusks erect and mouth wide open, a perfect glimpse
of elephantine fury. It forms a capital example of early impressionism,
respectfully recommended to the favourable attention of Mr. J.M.
Whistler.

The reindeer, however, formed the favourite food and favourite model of
the pre-Glacial artists. Perhaps it was a better sitter than the
mammoth; certainly it is much more frequently represented on these early
prehistoric bas-reliefs. The high-water mark of palaeolithic art is
undoubtedly to be found in the reindeer of the cave of Thayngen, in
Switzerland, a capital and spirited representation of a buck grazing, in
which the perspective of the two horns is better managed than a Chinese
artist would manage it at the present day. Another drawing of two
reindeer fighting, scratched on a fragment of schistose rock and
unearthed in one of the caves of Perigord, though far inferior to the
Swiss specimen in spirit and execution, is yet not without real merit.
The perspective, however, displays one marked infantile trait, for the
head and legs of one deer are seen distinctly through the body of
another. Cave bears, fish, musk sheep, foxes, and many other extinct or
existing animals are also found among the archaic sculptures. Probably
all these creatures were used as food; and it is even doubtful whether
the artistic troglodytes were not also confirmed cannibals. To quote Mr.
Andrew Lang once more on primitive man, 'he lived in a cave by the seas;
he lived upon oysters and foes.' The oysters are quite undoubted, and the
foes may be inferred with considerable certainty.

I have spoken of our old master more than once under this rather
question-begging style a