images to which they have given rise.  Drawings of animals and some other objects are found among the lowest savages, such as the Tasmanians and Australians.  Nor is this fact peculiar to the lower historic races, and to those which are still in existence, but it is also to be found in the dwellings and remains of prehistoric man; carvings on stone of very ancient date have been found, coeval with extinct and fossil animals, prior to the age of our flora and fauna and to the present conformation of land and water.  There are many clear proofs of the extreme antiquity of the primitive impulse to imitative arts.  A stag’s meta-tarsal bone, on which there was a carving of two ruminants, was found in the cave of Savigny:  in a cave at Eyzies there was a fragmentary carving of two animals on two slabs of schist; at La Madelaine there were found two so-called staves of office, on which were representations of a horse, of reindeer, cattle, and other animals; two outlines of men, one of a fore-arm, and one of a naked man in a stooping position, with a short staff on his shoulder; there is also the outline of a mammoth on a sheet of ivory; a statuette of a thin woman without arms, found by M. Vibraye at Laugerie-Basse, and known by the name of the immodest Venus; a drawing representing a man, or so-called hunter, armed with a bow, and pursuing a male auroch, going with its head down and of a fierce aspect; the man is perfectly naked, and wears a pointed beard.  Other designs of the chase and of animals afford a clear proof of the remote period at which the primitive instinct towards the imitative arts existed.

It is peculiar to man to portray things and animals, and to erect monuments out of a superstitious feeling, or to glorify an individual or the nation; the bower-birds and some cognate species may perhaps be regarded as an exception, since they show a certain sense of beauty, and an extrinsic satisfaction in gay colours, which indeed appears in many animals.  But art in the true sense and in its essential principle are the act and product of man alone, of which I have demonstrated the cause and comparative reasons in another work, so that it is unnecessary to repeat them here.  Some rare cases indicate an artistic construction which is not an essential part of animal functions, and the sense of form and colour occurs in some species.  But this only shows that there exist in the animal kingdom the roots of every art and sentiment peculiar to man, subsequently perfected by him in an exclusive and reflex manner, and this confirms the general truths of heredity and evolution.

When primitive man draws or carves objects, he does not merely obey the innate impulse to give an external form to the image already in his mind, but while satisfying the aesthetic sentiment which actuates him, he is conscious of some mysterious power and superstitious influence.  This sentiment is not only apparent in our own children, but among nearly all savages, of which many instances might be given; some of them are even afraid to look at a portrait, and shrink from it as from a living person.