FACULTY IN ABORKimAL RACKS. 87 



M. Lartet at La Madeleine, it is impossible to avoid recognizing the Elephas primigenius 

 which existed throughout the glacial i^eriod, and which has been recovered entire in the 

 frozen soil of northern Asia. Oxen, wild goats, the stagî the antelope, the otter, the beaver, 

 the horse, the aurochs, whales, certain si>ecies of fish, etc., have been found recognizable 

 with the like certainty. The reindeer especially is frequently represented with remark- 

 able skill. This may be seen by the engraving found near Thayingen, in Switzerland." ' 



M. de Quatrefages is disposed to estimate the artistic merit of the carvings in ivory 

 as even greater than that of the drawings or etchings. But specihc form and contour 

 are more easily realizable than their indication on a plane surface. To do full justice to the 

 wonderful skill of the Troglodyte draftsman, we must compare the most highly finished 

 paintings on Egyptian temples and tombs with the works of their sculptors ; or even the 

 perfect realizations of the Grreek sculptors' chisel, with drawings on the most beautiful 

 Hellenic vases. The mastery of perspective as shown in some of the works of those 

 palœolithic artists is remarkable when compared, for example, with the Assyrian bas- 

 reliefs ; not to speak of the infantile efforts of the Chinese on their otherwise justly 

 prized ceramic ware. 



The potter's art is at all times an interesting study to the archœologist. "We owe to 

 Etruscan and Hellenic fictile ware our sole knowledge of painting, contemporary with the 

 most gifted masters of the sculptor's art. But it is in the form, rather than the decoration, 

 that the chief excellency of the art of the potter consists. It is one of the plastic arts. 

 The clay in the hands of the skilled modeller is even more facile than the pencil of the 

 draftsman ; and the distinction between the purely decorative sports of an exuberant fancy, 

 and the purposed symbolism of the carver or painter, is nowhere more strikingly manifest 

 than in the modellings of the ingenious worker in clay. But fictile art belongs, for the 

 most part, to periods greatly more recent than that of the ancient Stone Age. Not that the 

 work of the primitive potter involved such laboriously accumulated skill as lay beyond 

 reach of the palteolithic carver and draftsman ; for clay cylinders from the banks of the 

 Euphrates, and the terra-cottas from the Nile valley, carry us back to times that long ante- 

 date definite history. But alike among the ancient caA-e-dwellers of Aquitaine, and the 

 modern Eskimo, the prevailing conditions of an arctic or semi-arctic climate rendered 

 clay, fuel, and other needful appliances, so rarely available, that among the latter, their 

 pots and lamps are fashioned for the most part of the Lapis ollarh, or potstone. But traces 

 of the p)ottery of many periods and races abound, and furnish interesting materials for 

 comparison. The aptitude of the potter's clay for a display of skill, alike in modelling 

 and in tracing on the surface imitative designs and ornamental patterns, renders the fictile 

 ware of widely different eras a ready test of œsthetic feeling, as well as a trustworthy 

 guide to the age and race of its artificers. To the ancient cave-men to whose skill such 

 carvings as the reindeer from Laugerie Basse, or Montastrue, are due, modelling in clay 

 would have been as easy and natural as to the modern sculptor ; and pottery, if well 

 biirnt, when not exposed to violence, is little less durable than flint or stone. The rarity, 

 or total absence, of pottery among the contents of the palœolithic caves accords with other 

 indications of a rigorous climate. A piece of plain earthenware was, indeed, recovered 

 from the Belgian cave of Trou de Frontal ; and Sir W. Dawson, in his " Fossil Men," calls 



' Hommes fossiles, etc., p. 46. 



