222 EARLY MAN IN BRITAIN. [CHAP.VII. 



The outlines of other animals, such as the stag, the 

 great Irish elk with its huge palmated antlers, the 

 ibex with its gracefully recurved horns, and the 

 mammoth, have been met with in the caves of France, 

 besides the bisons, seals, and birds already mentioned. 

 In the figure of the mammoth the artist has seized the 

 salient points with wonderful fidelity (Fig. 22) ; the 

 spiral curvature of the tusks, the long hairy ears, and 

 the long mane, which, had it not been for the discovery 

 of the carcases preserved in the frozen morasses of 

 Siberia, we should say were fictitious, because they are 

 unlike those of any living species of elephant. In another 

 example already mentioned (Fig. 80) the head of a 

 charging elephant is most admirably engraved. The 

 head of a brown bear is represented on a piece of antler 

 from the cave of Bas-Massat, and on a fragment of schist 

 from the same cave are the well-defined- outlines of a 

 species probably identical with the great cave-bear (Fig. 

 81). I Sometimes the outlines of skins stretched out to 

 dry are recognisable, and more rarely those of flowers 

 and leaves (Fig. 91). The last occur in the caves of 

 Belgium, France, and Switzerland."^ The human figure 

 was but rarely sketched by the Cave-men, and that given 

 in Fig. 77, in the hunting of the urus, is the most artistic 

 as yet discovered. 



Some of the vertical incised lines, and more especially 

 those in the sketch on a piece of antler from the rock- 

 shelter of Laugerie Basse, described by the Abbe Lan- 

 desque, 1 may show that the inhabitants of Europe, in 

 the late Pleistocene age, had their bodies more densely 

 covered with hair than is usually the case at the present 

 time. The protection from the cold which we and our 



1 Matfriaux, 1874, p. 276. 



