116 A VERY OLD MASTER 



Glacial horses the splint bones still generally remained 

 quite distinct, thus pointing back to the still earlier period 

 when they existed as two separate and independent side 

 toes in the ancestral quadruped. In a few cave specimens, 

 however, the splints are found united with the canons in a 

 single piece, while conversely horses are sometimes, though 

 very rarely, born at the present day with three-toed feet, 

 exactly resembling those of their half-forgotten ancestor, 

 the Pliocene hipparion. 



The reason why we know so much about the horses of 

 the cave period is, I am bound to admit, simply and solely 

 because the man of the period ate them. Hippophagy has 

 always been popular in France ; it was practised by pre- 

 Glacial man in the caves of Perigord, and revived with 

 immense enthusiasm by the gourmets of the Boulevards 

 after the siege of Paris and the hunger of the Commune. 

 The cave men hunted and killed the wild horse of their 

 own times, and one of the best of their remaining works of 

 art represents a naked hunter attacking two horses, while 

 a huge snake winds itself unperceived behind close to his 

 heel. In this rough prehistoric sketch one seems to catch 

 some faint antique foresliadowing of the rude humour of 

 the * Petit Journal pour Eire.' Some archaeologists even 

 believe that the horse was domesticated by the cave men 

 as a source of food, and argue that the familiarity with its 

 form shown in the drawings could only have been acquired 

 by people who knew the animal in its domesticated state ; 

 they declare that the cave man was obviously horsey. But 

 all the indications seem to me to show that tame animals 

 were quite unknown in the age of the cave men. The 

 mammoth certainly was never domesticated ; yet there is 

 a famous sketch of the huge beast upon a piece of his own 

 ivory, discovered in the cave of La Madelaine by Messrs. 

 Lartet and Christy, and engraved a hundred times in works 



