THE CHAPTER II. ART AND ORNAMENTS. earliest traces of art yet discovered belong to the Stone Age-to a time so remote that the reindeer was abundant in the south of France, and that probably, though on this point there is some doubt, even the mammoth had not entirely disappeared. These works of art are sometimes sculptures, if one may say so, and sometimes drawings or etchings made on bone or horn with the point of a flint. They are of peculiar interest, both as being the earliest works of art known to us-older than any Egyptian statues, or any of the Assyrian monuments-and also because, though so ancient, they show really considerable skill. There is, for instance, a certain spirit about the subjoined group of reindeer (fig. 1), copied from a specimen in the collection of the Marquis de Vibraye. The mammoth (Pl. I.) represented on the opposite page, though less artistic, is perhaps even more interesting. It is scratched on a piece of mammoth's tusk, and was found in the cave of La Madeleine in the Dordogne. It is somewhat remarkable that while even in the Stone Period we find very fair drawings of animals, yet in the latest part of the Stone Age, and throughout that of Bronze, they are almost entirely wanting, and the ornamentation is confined to various combinations of straight and curved lines and geometrical patterns. This, I believe, will eventually be found to imply a difference of race between the population of Western Europe at these different periods. Thus at present the Esquimaux (see figs. 2-4) are very fair draughtsmen, while the Polynesians, though much more advanced in many ways, and though skilful in ornamenting both themselves and their weapons, have very little idea indeed of representing animals or plants. Their tattooings, for instance, and the patterns on their weapons, are, like the ornaments of the Bronze Age, almost invariably of a geometrical character. Representations of animals and plants are not, indeed, entirely wanting; but, whether attempted in drawing or in sculpture, they are always rude and grotesque. With the Esquimaux the very reverse is the case: among them we find none of those graceful spirals, and other geometrical patterns, |