PRIMEVAL DEXTERITY. 141 



eros, the fossil horse, the Irish elk, the cave-bear, cave-lion, and cave- 

 hysena, with other extinct fauna, were to be found immediately to 

 the north of the Pyrenees, along with the musk-sheep, the reindeer, 

 and other Arctic mammals. The evidence of remote antiquity of 

 the period marked by this extinct fauna, is of so comprehensive a 

 character that it may be assumed to have now received universal 

 acceptance. Any indications, therefore, of special intellectual capa- 

 city, such as the carvings and diawings of the cave-men reveal, are 

 of special significance. 



These examples of primitive art are of varying degrees of merit. 

 Some may be compared with the first efibrts of any untutored youth ; 

 while others, such as the La Madelaine mammoth and the grazing 

 reindeer from the Kesserloch, furnish evidence of the observant eye 

 and the pi-actised hand of the skilled draftsman. Among a series 

 of fanciful illusti-ations introduced by M. Louis Figuier in his 

 " L'Homme Primitif," is a group of artists of the Reindeer epoch at 

 work. Three men of fine physique, slightly clad in skins, stand or 

 recline in easy attitudes, sketching or carving as a modern artist 

 might do in the lighter hours of bis practice. One stands and 

 sketches a deer with free hand on a piece of slate, which rests against 

 a ledge of rock as his easel. Another, seated c.t his ease, traces a 

 miniature device with, it may be, a pointed flint, on a slab of boae 

 or ivory. The third is apparently carving or modelling a deer or 

 other quadruped. All are, as a matter of course, represented with 

 the stylus, graver, or modelling tool in the right hand ; the question 

 of possible left-handedness not having occurred to the modern 

 draftsman. 



On the assumption of the significance of the direction of the pro- 

 file, as a test of right or left-handedness, the following is the result 

 of its application to the evidence of this class thus far available. 

 The mammoth-drawing from the La Madelaine cave ; the bison, im- 

 perfect, showing only the hindquarters ; and the ibex, on a reindeer- 

 antler, from Laugerie Basse ; the group of reindeer, from the Dor- 

 dogne, two walking and one lying on its back ; the cave bear of the 

 Pyrenees, from the cave of Massat, in the department of Ari^ge ; 

 and another representing a hunter stalking the TJi^s, may all be re- 

 garded as right-hand, drawings. But the horses from La Madelaine, 

 engraved on reindeer-antler, specially noticeable for tlieir large heads; 

 the horse, from Creswell Crags ; the ibex, with legs in the air ; and, 

 2 



