they had to drive the cave-bear, and among snows where they stalked the reindeer and the mammoth, must have been very rough.  These earliest known Europeans, ‘palaeolithic men,’ as they called, from their use of the ancient unpolished stone weapons, appear to have inhabited the countries now known as France and England, before the great Age of Ice.  This makes their date one of incalculable antiquity; they are removed from us by a ‘dark backward and abysm of time.’  The whole Age of Ice, the dateless period of the polishers of stone weapons, the arrival of men using weapons of bronze, the time which sufficed to change the climate and fauna and flora of Western Europe, lie between us and palaeolithic man.  Yet in him we must recognise a skill more akin to the spirit of modern art than is found in any other savage race.  Palaeolithic man, like other savages, decorated his weapons; but, as I have already said, he did not usually decorate them in the common savage manner with ornamental patterns.  He scratched on bits of bone spirited representations of all the animals whose remains are found mixed with his own.  He designed the large-headed horse of that period, and science inclines to believe that he drew the breed correctly.  His sketches of the mammoth, the reindeer, the bear, and of many fishes, may be seen in the British Museum, or engraved in such works as Professor Boyd Dawkins’s ‘Early Man in Britain.’  The object from which our next illustration (Fig. 12) was engraved represents a deer, and was a knife-handle.  Eyes at all trained in art can readily observe the wonderful spirit and freedom of these ancient sketches.  They are the rapid characteristic work of true artists who know instinctively what to select and what to sacrifice.

[Fig 12.  Palaeolithic art — a knife-handle:  299.jpg]

Some learned men, Mr. Boyd Dawkins among them, believe that the Eskimo, that stunted hunting and fishing race of the Western Arctic circle, are descendants of the palaeolithic sketchers, and retain their artistic qualities.  Other inquirers, with Mr. Geikie and Dr. Wilson, do not believe in this pedigree of the Eskimo.  I speak not with authority, but the submission of ignorance, and as one who has no right to an opinion about these deep matters of geology and ethnology.  But to me, Mr. Geikie’s arguments appear distinctly the more convincing, and I cannot think it demonstrated that the Eskimo are descended from our old palaeolithic artists.  But if Mr. Boyd Dawkins is right, if the Eskimo derive their lineage from the artists of the Dordogne, then the Eskimo are sadly degenerated.  In Mr. Dawkins’s ‘Early Man’ is an Eskimo drawing of a reindeer hunt, and a palaeolithic sketch of a reindeer; these (by permission of the author and Messrs. Macmillan) we reproduce.  Look at the vigour and life of the ancient drawing—­the feathering hair on the deer’s breast, his head, his horns, the very grasses at his feet, are touched with the graver