INTRODUCTION. 
Zoopraxography, or the science of animal motion, has 
been studied by mankind from the most remote period 
of the world’s history. 
If we seek for evidence of its original application to 
design in art, we must direct our attention to an epoch 
very much nearer to that in which intelligent life first 
appeared on this earth, than to any of which history or 
even tradition has left the faintest connecting record. 
Until the middle of this century it was the general 
belief that the most ancient relics of the attention of 
man to artistic pursuits would be found on the banks of 
the Nile. 
The dates of Chinese antiquities were shrouded in 
mystery; all traces of the once powerful Hittites had 
disappeared, and the great cities of the Chaldaean and of 
the Assyrian empires had been so completely obliterated 
that Xenophon, two thousand years ago, marched his 
army over the site of Nineveh without apparent know¬ 
ledge of its buried ruins. 
o 
About fifty years ago some explorations in the south 
of France brought to light a few remnants of carving 
and engraving executed by a race of men who, unknown 
centuries ago, left evidences of their sharing with the 
mammoth and the reindeer a life amid such circumstances 
as are experienced in an arctic region. 
Living under the conditions which must have sur- 
rounded man at this early period of his evolution, it 
seems astonishing that he should have had either the 
inclination or the taste to devote his attention to artistic 
pursuits; but the debris of the caves wherein he dwelt 
furnish the proof not only of his being a skilful imitator, 
both in the round and in outline, of things which he saw, 
but, what is of especial interest, that art was born in his 
attempt to delineate an animal in motion. The few dis¬ 
covered fragments of his labours evince a quickness of 
observation, an appreciation of form and proportion, and 
a faculty of expressing movement with such scientific 
fidelity that as little imagination is required to understand 
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