114 A VERY OLD MASTER 



very early pre-Glacial man is represented in the act of 

 hunting an aurochs, at which he is casting a flint-tipped 

 javelin. In this, as in all other pictures of the same epoch, 

 I regret to say that the ancient hunter is represented in 

 the costume of Adam before the fall. Our old master's 

 studies, in fact, are all in the nude. Primitive man was 

 evidently unacquainted as yet with the use of clothing, 

 though primitive woman, while still unclad, had already 

 learnt how to heighten her natural charms by the simple 

 addition of a necklace and bracelets. Indeed, though 

 dresses were still wholly unknown, rouge was even then 

 extremely fashionable among French ladies, and lumps of 

 the ruddle with which primitive woman made herself 

 beautiful for ever are now to be discovered in the corner of 

 the cave where she had her little prehistoric boudoir. To 

 return to our hunter, however, who for aught we know to 

 the contrary may be our old master himself in person, he 

 is a rather crouching and semi-erect savage, with an arched 

 back, recalling somewhat that of the gorilla, a round head, 

 long neck, pointed beard, and weak, shambling, ill-de- 

 veloped legs. I fear we must admit that pre-Glacial man 

 cut, on the whole, a very sorry and awkward figure. 



Was he black ? That we don't certainly know, but all 

 analogy would lead one to answer positively, Yes. White 

 men seem, on the whole, to be a very recent and novel 

 improvement on the original evolutionary pattern. At any 

 rate he was distinctly hairy, like the Ainos, or aborigines 

 of Japan, in our own day, of whom Miss Isabella Bird has 

 drawn so startling and sensational a picture. Several of 

 the pre-Glacial sketches show us lank and gawky savages 

 with the body covered with long scratches, answering ex- 

 actly to the scratches which represent the hanging hair of 

 the mammoth, and suggesting that man then still retained 

 his old original hairy covering. The few skulls and other 



