mer there are very admirable
drawings of the red deer, and on the latter silhouettes of the bull,
of the red deer, and the ibex. In fact, no representations of reindeer
have been observed on cave walls or rock-shelters south of the
Pyrenees. It is possible that this may be due to the date of the
Spanish paintings being a good deal later than that of those French
cave-paintings which show reindeer, mammoth, and rhinoceros. And we
have to bear in mind that in the North of Africa (Oran) engraved
drawings on exposed rocks are known, which are for good reasons
attributed to the Neolithic period; that is to say, they are later
than the Reindeer epoch of the Palaeolithic period, whilst some are
even much later.

In any case we have to remember that there are two very different and
possible explanations of the presence or absence either of certain
animals' bones or of representations of certain animals in one
"decorated" cave and not in another. The one explanation is that
animals have succeeded one another in time in Western Europe--changing
as the climatic conditions have changed--and that when, in two
cave-decorations or cave-deposits compared, the animals are different,
the cause may be that the one deposit or cave-decoration is more
recent than the other. The other explanation is that (as we well know)
at one and the same moment very different animals occupy tracts of
land which are only a hundred miles or so apart, but differ in climate
and general conditions. At this moment there are wild bears and also
wolves in France, but none in England; the elk occurs in Sweden and
Russia, but not in the West of Europe; the porcupine in Italy and in
Spain, but not in France. As late as the historic period the African
elephant flourished on the African shore of the Mediterranean, but not
in Spain; now it is not found north of the Sahara at all. So we have
various possibilities to consider in comparing the animal pictures on
the cave walls of Spain with those found in France, and may well
suspend judgment till we have knowledge of a greatly extended area.

* * * * *

I am anxious to draw attention in this chapter to the painted group of
ten human figures lately discovered on a rock shelter at Cogul, near
Lerida, in Catalonia, and figured and described in the admirable
French journal called "L'Anthropologie." These figures are those of
young women dressed in short skirts and curious sleeves, the hair d