The Action of Deer 8 7 



trot, and he used always from preference to go up to stiff timber 

 at a trot, but it was only a jog-trot, and not a fast one like that 

 of the hind in question. 



Indian blackbuck have a stilty slow pace which corresponds to 

 walking in other animals, and they follow in single file this stiff 

 walk like a lot of camels. When I first saw this drawn in 

 Egyptian hieroglyphics, I thought it was a mistake on the part 

 of the artist, who, however, was quite right, as were all the ancient 

 artists, including the cave-dwellers, when they drew animals. They 

 seemed to understand the nature and habits of animals much more 

 than present-day animal painters, who attribute to them human 

 ideas and actions, and only draw when not from their own imagi- 

 nation from animals cooped up in cages. I believe the cave- 

 dwellers drew from memory, not from a model ; drawing from a 

 stationary model or dead animal leads to false movement, and this is 

 the reason Landseer's animals never show real action, whereas Rosa 

 Bonheur's and Meissonier's do. 



Modern artists, for instance, paint a bear walking along like a 

 dog, instead of slouching along with the rolling swing it has 

 when at home; and none of them ever drew a shot bird "well 

 centred " except Stuart Wortley. On the other hand, an old 

 Syrian wall-sculpture of a wounded lioness shows exactly where 

 she is hit (i.e. a broken- back) by the manner in which she is 

 dragging her hind-quarters. 



It is curious how unobservant animal painters have become since 

 those early times ; their representation of the trot and gallop was 

 always wrong, and the only reason it is now generally more 

 accurately drawn is because they have instantaneous photography 



