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SOME EARLY FORMS OF ART. 88 
leaves the natural grey substance exposed. They extend over an 
area of several square miles; the highest is 7,500 ft. high. 
The subjects are various. By far the larger number are repre- 
gentations of heads or bodies of animals with horns, sometimes two 
pairs of horns. Next to these the most abundant are weapons — 
such as swords, javelins, and daggers. There are indications of nails 
for fastening points to wooden stems. Some of these are carefully 
modelled, and possibly the artist had the actual weapons at hand to 
copy. There are geometrical patterns, rectangles, circles, wheels, 
spirals, roughly cut as a rule. 
There is one remarkable pattern—the blades of two weapons, and 
at the base of each an outstretched hand with five fingers extended. 
There are groups of ploughs with men and oxen; the plough- 
share is indicated and the man holds the handle. But the favourite 
design is an ox or a yoke of oxen, some with ears, some with four 
legs and tail, some with tails and legless, some in pairs, some in 
teams of four or even six, yoked. Now ploughs and oxen are usually 
drawn in profile. In prehistoric engraving and modelling, in 
Egyptian, Indian, Assyrian, Greek, Roman sculptures we invari- 
ably find profile. These pictures convey an idea of looking down 
from above, and are unique in that respect in the world. The ox 
forms a rectangle. But there is no arable soil among these stones 
at an elevation of 6,000 feet or more; there never could have been 
‘cultivated land in these barren regions. The agricultural sculptor 
must have stood on a terrace above the team and carried the outline 
in his head. Or, since pictorial forms are earlier than letters, 
hieroglyphic pictures than alphabets, may we surmise that tracings 
by a grandfather's stick on the sand or dust were the earliest form 
of tuition, and that the purple shadow formed at noon by the bright 
Italian sun was the origin of these early specimens of freehand. If 
you will try, when summer’s sun returns, to observe the outline of 
