PRIMEVAL DEXTERITY. 141 
eros, the fossil horse, the Irish elk, the cave-bear, cave-lion, and cave- 
hyena, with other extinct fauna, were to be found immediately to 
the north of the Pyrenees, along with the musk-sheep, the reindeer, 
and other Arctic mammals. The evidence of remote antiquity of 
the period marked by this extinct fauna, is of so comprehensive a 
character that it may be assumed to have now received universal 
acceptance. Any indications, therefore, of special intellectual capa- 
city, such as the carvings and drawings of the cave-men reveal, are 
of special significance. 
These examples of primitive art are of varying degrees of merit. 
Some may be compared with the first efforts of any untutored youth ; 
while others, such as the La Madelaine mammoth and the grazing 
reindeer from the Kesserloch, furnish evidence of the observant eye 
and the practised hand of the skilled draftsman. Among a series 
of fanciful illustrations introduced by M. Louis Figuier in his 
*“ T?/Homme Primitif,” is a group of artists of the Reindeer epoch at 
work. Three men of fine physique, slightly clad in skins, stand or 
recline in easy attitudes, sketching or carving as a modern artist 
might do in the lighter hours of his practice. One stands and 
sketches a deer with free hand on a piece of slate, which rests against 
a ledge of rock as his easel. Another, seated at his ease, traces a 
miniature device with, it may be, a pointed flint, on a slab of bone 
or ivory. The third is apparently carving or modelling a deer or 
other quadruped. All are, as a matter of course, represented with 
the stylus, graver, or modelling tool in the right hand ; the question 
of possible left-handedness not baving occurred to the modern 
draftsman. 
On the assumption of the significance of the direction of the pro- 
file, as a test of right or left-handedness, the following is the result 
of its application to the evidence of this class thus far available. 
The mammoth-drawing from the La Madelaine cave; the bison, im- 
perfect, showing only the hindquarters ; and the ibex, on a reindeer- 
antler, from Laugerie Basse; the group of reindeer, from the Dor- 
dogne, two walking and one lying on its back ; the cave bear of the 
Pyrenees, from the cave of Massat, in the department of Ariége ; 
and another representing a hunter stalking the Urus, may all be re- 
garded as right-hand drawings. But the horses from La Madelaime, 
engraved on reindeer-antler, specially noticeable for their large heads; 
the horse, from Creswell Crags ; the ibex, with legs in the air ; and, 
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