In \Yi Iciest Africa -* 



recollection of the endless lapse of time during which 

 mankind had to struggle with the beasts of the earth 

 for mastery." Let us for a few moments turn our gaze 

 backwards to that far past. In epochs that the learned 

 date back by hundreds of thousands ot years, we find 

 attempts made by the cave-dwellers to execute artistic 

 representations of nature as they saw it. The artist of 

 prehistoric times set to work with his rude instruments 

 to draw in merest outline on a smooth rock-face, on a 

 tusk taken in the chase, or on some such material, the 

 things that had particularly attracted his thoughts or 

 stimulated his efforts. Specimens of these primitive works 

 of art have been handed clown to us. In the first place 

 there are pictures of animals, scratched upon ivory, and 

 notwithstanding all their crudeness, sketched with sufficient 



<j 



ability to enable us to-day to recognise with certainty the 

 objects which the artist tried to depict. Such sketches 

 scratched on ivory, showing various kinds of animals 

 (some of them now extinct) and forming the oldest docu- 

 ments of the animal-sketcher's art, have been found in 

 the caves of the south-west of Trance, in the old dwelling- 

 places of the so-called " Madeleine" hunters ot La 

 Madeleine and Laugerie Basse. The museum at Zurich 

 also possesses similar primitive documents from the 

 Kesslerloch cave, near Thaingen, in the canton ot 

 Schaffhausen. 



It is indeed not surprising that the cave-dweller of 

 those days took his models from the ranks of' the animal 

 creation. All his thoughts and efforts were directed to 

 the chase ; lie had no resources but in this pursuit, and 



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