THE DOG IN MYCENAEAN ART 63 



coveries) to establish the gradual passage of pre-classical 

 Mycenaean art across Central Asia to China and Japan by 

 trade routes and human migrations which had no touch 

 with later Greece nor with Assyria nor India. 



How did the Mycenaeans come to invent, or at any rate 

 adopt, the convention of " the flying gallop," seeing that it 

 does not truly represent either the fact or the appearance 

 of a galloping horse? Though 20,000 years ago the 

 earliest of all known artists, the wonderful cave-men of 

 the Reindeer period, drew bison, boars, and deer in rapid 

 running movement with consummate skill, they were (be 

 it said to their credit !) innocent of the conventional pose 

 of the " flying gallop." I base this statement on my own 

 knowledge of their work. M. Reinach thinks that the 

 " flying gallop " was devised as an intentional expression 

 of energy in movement. I venture to hold the opinion 

 that it was observed by the Mycenaeans in the dog, in 

 which Muybridge's photographs (now before me) demon- 

 strate that it occurs regularly as an attitude of that animal's 

 quickest pace or gallop (see fig. 5, PL II). It is easy to 

 see the " flying gallop " in the case of the dog, since the 

 dog does not travel so fast as the galloping horse, and can 

 be more readily brought under accurate vision on account 

 of its smaller size. The late Professor Marey (a great 

 investigator of animal movement) appears to have denied 

 that the dog exhibits the full stretch of both limbs with 

 the pads of the hind-feet upturned, and all the feet free 

 from the ground. He was mistaken, as Muybridge's 

 photograph giving side and back view of a galloping fox- 

 terrier amply demonstrates. It is quite in accordance with 

 probability that the early Mycenaean artists, having seen 

 how the dog gallops, erroneously proceeded to put the 

 galloping horse, and all other animals which they wished 

 " to make gallop," into the same position. 



It appears, then, that the poses used by artists at 



