one
up in a conical mass rising from the sides to the top of the head.
Each figure is about ten inches high. The great interest about these
drawings is that they are probably tens of thousands of years old,
and present to us the women of the reindeer or late Pleistocene epoch.
No other such painting of the women of this period is known, and the
astonishing thing is that, though these are by no means fine specimens
of prehistoric art, yet there is a definitely modern look about the
figures and a freedom of touch about the drawing which makes one think
at first that the picture is some modern, hasty but clever sketch in
silhouette of a number of short skirted school girls at play. The
waist is extremely small and elongated, the skirt, or petticoat, bell
shaped, and the whole figure "sinuous." One of the figures appears to
have a cloak or jacket, but the breasts and legs are bare.

[Illustration: Fig. 24.--Reproduction of drawings from a rock shelter
near Lerida, in Catalonia, representing a group of women clothed in
jacket and skirt with "wasp-like" waists. The original figures are ten
inches high, and the drawing probably dates from the late Palaeolithic
period.]

[Illustration: Fig. 25.--A further portion of the same group as that
shown in Fig. 24. In front is a small deer-like animal.]

Some three years ago Sir Arthur Evans discovered in the palace of the
ancient Kings of Crete coloured frescoes some 3,500 years old
representing in great detail elegant young women with greatly
compressed waists, strongly-pronounced bustles, and elaborately
ornamented skirts. These Cretan paintings of prehistoric young women,
both in costume and pose, are like nothing so much as the portraits of
distinguished ladies of the fashionable world of Paris exhibited by
the painter, Boldini, in the "Salon." It is remarkable that explorers
should have found contemporary paintings of young ladies who lived
nearly as long before Cleopatra as she lived before us. And it is
still more remarkable that those young ladies were "got up" in the
same style, and apparently aimed at much the same effects of line and
movement, as those which have become the latest fashion in Paris, and
may be described as sinuous and serpentine. Not only is that the case,
but it is evident that the painter of Knossos, the Minotaur city, and
M. Boldini have experienced the same artistic impression, and have
presented in their pictures the same significance of pose and the