86 DANIEL WILSON ON THE AETISTIC 



But foremost in every trait of value are tlie human heads. In view of the accuracy of 

 many of the miniature sculptures of animals, it has been reasonably assumed that they 

 perpetuate no less trustworthy representations of the workmen by whom they were carved. 

 Equally well-executed examples of contemporary portraiture, recovered from palœolithic 

 caves of Europe, would be prized above all other relics of its Mammoth or Keiudeer Period. 

 Nevertheless, striking as is the character of the art of the Aligéwi, it differs only in 

 degree of merit from that of many modern Indian races ; and in some of the Algonkin 

 stone-pipes the human figure is carved with well-proportioned symmetry. In such carv- 

 ings, moreover, even when expended on the decoration of the pipe, — which was employed 

 among so many native tribes of this continent in their most important ceremonial and 

 religious observances, — there is rarely anything to suggest a higher aim of the artist than 

 mere decoration. The same may be assumed of the ancient carvers, in such work as they 

 expended on the hafts of the daggers found at Montastrue or Laugerie Basse. But when a 

 carefully executed linear drawing occurs on a rough slab of schist, with its fractured edges 

 left tintrimmed, as is the case in examples from the caves of Les Eysies and Massât, the 

 artist manifestly had some other purpose in view ; and this I conceive to have been the 

 earliest stage of ideography or picture-writing. 



Language is eve.u now a very inadequate means of communicating to others specific 

 ideas of form ; and some of the most fluent and versatile lecturers in those departments of 

 science, such as geology, biology, and anthropology, in which there is a frequent demand 

 for the appreciation of details in form and structure, habitually resort to the chalk and 

 blackboard. Students of my own earlier days will recall, as among their most pleasant 

 memories, the facile pencil with which the gifted naturalist, Edward Forbes, seemed 

 equally eloquent with hand and tongue ; and no one who has enjoyed the lucid demon- 

 strations of Agassiz in the same fields of scientific research can think of him otherwise 

 than with chalk in hand. To the irncultured, yet strangely gifted Troglodyte of the 

 primeval dawn, language was still more inadequate for his requirements ; and hence, as I 

 imagine, the facile i^encil was in frequent requisition for purposes of demonstration, with 

 ever growing skill to the practised hand. Professor de Quatrefages, who has enjoyed 

 unusually favourable opportunities for the study of those productions, thus directs atten- 

 tion to their artistic merits : " The art of the draftsman, or rather of the engraver, almost 

 constantly applied to the representation of animals, was first tried on bone or horn. They 

 have attempted it on stone. The burin must have been almost always a mere pointed 

 flint. With this instrument, imperfect though it was, the Troglodytes of the Eeindeer Age 

 succeeded by degrees in producing results altogether remarkable. The first lines are sim- 

 ple and more or less vague. At a later stage they become more defined, and acquire a 

 singular firmness and precision : the principal lines become deeper ; details, such as the 

 fur and mane, are indicated by lighter lines, and even the shading is expressed by deli- 

 cate hatching. But what is nearly always apparent is a sense of truthful realization, and 

 the exact copying of characteristics which enable us often to recognize not only the order, 

 but the precise species, which the artist wished to represent. The bear, engraved on a 

 piece of schist which was found by M. Grarrigou in the lower caA'e at Massât, with the 

 characteristic projecting forehead, can be no other than the cave-bear, the bones of which 

 were recovered by that observer in the same place. When we compare the drawings and 

 anatomical details of the Siberian mammoth with the engraving on ivory discovered by 



