FACULTY IN ABORIGINAL EACES. 73 



rarest traces of auy effort at imitatiou. Thirty-four years ago, when the primitive arts of the 

 American coutiueut were only known to me from description, I remarked, of the archaic 

 art of the lirst British metallnrgists : " The ornamentation consists, almost without excep- 

 tion, only of improvements on the accidents of manufacture. The incised decorations of 

 the pottery appear, in many cases, to have been produced simply by passing twisted cords 

 round the soft clay. More complicated designs, most frequently consisting of chevron, 

 saltire, or herring-bone patterns, where they are not merely the results of a combination 

 of such lines, have been suggested, as I conceive, by the few and half-accidental patterns 

 of the industrious female knitter. In no single case is auy attempt made at the imitation 

 of a leaf or flower, of animals, or any other simple objects.'' ' At the date of those remarks 

 the art of Europe's Palaeolithic Era had still to be disclosed ; but, with the arts of other 

 primitive races, and especially those of the American continent, in view, I then added : " It 

 is curious, indeed, and noteworthy, to find how entirely every trace of imitative art is 

 absent in British archaic relics ; for it is by no means an invariable characteristic of primi- 

 tiA-e arts." Dr. Hoffman, when commenting on aboriginal American art among the Indians 

 of California, adds : " I have not met with any attempts at objective drawings or etchings 

 which may be attributed to the Tshuma Indians, who were the former occupants of the 

 island ; ■ but ornamentations upon shells and bone beads, soapstone pipes, shell pendants, and 

 other ornaments, seem to consist entirely of straight or zigzag lines, cross lines, circles, etc." 

 The earliest examples of native metallurgy in Britain are to be found, I believe, in the 

 works of the primitive goldsmith ; but the same conventional and arbitrary ornamentation 

 which occiirs on early pottery, is equally characteristic of the beautifvrl personal ornaments 

 of gold belonging, for the most part, to the first period of working in metals ; and it is not 

 till a late stage of the European Bronze Period that imitative art reappears, and zoomor- 

 phic decorations become common. 



The discovery in 1868, and subsequent years, of numerous specimens of the artistic 

 ability of the cave-men of palaeolithic Europe, revealed a singularly interesting phase of 

 primitive history. liemains of the so-called " Reindeer Period " are now familiar to us 

 from many localities ; for the range of this animal in palœolithic times appears to have 

 extended from the Baltic to the Pyrenees. But a special interest was conferred on the first 

 disclosures by the locality itself, where the Vézère, an affluent of the river Dordogne, 

 winds its way through the cretaceous limestone, in which occur numerous caves and rock- 

 shelters, rich in remains of primitive art. In this region of south-western France, where 

 many historical and legendary associations carry the fancy back to elder centuries, the 

 Dordogne unites with the Garonne at its estuary below Bordeaux. The upper waters of 

 the Dordogne form the boundary between Limousin and Auvergne, and the Vézère is 

 one of its highest tributaries in Limousin. There, nearly in the latitude of Montreal, but 

 with the genial climate which, throughout the whole historic period has characterized 

 southern France, lie the caves of Cro-Magnon, La Moustier, Gorge d'Enfer, Laugerie Haute 

 and Basse, and La Madelaine, the long-sealed art galleries of prehistoric Gaul. The rein- 

 deer and the aurochs haunted its forests; the woolly rhinoceros and the mammoth still fre- 

 qirented its glades ; and the long-extinct fossil horse was not only an object of the chase, but 



' Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, i. 495. 



- >. t: the Island of Santa Barbara. See "Roiiiark.s on Aboriginal Art," in I'roc. Davcnjiort Acad. Nat, Science, 

 iv. 121. 



Sec. IL, 18S5. 10. 



