same
form, from the tip of the nose to the ends of the fingers and the
points of the toes--thus revealing a sympathy reaching across many
ages. It seems to me that the same artistic impression is to be
detected in the still earlier paintings of the wasp-waisted little
ladies of the Cogul rock-shelter in Catalonia. We find here the same
sinuous figure with exaggeratedly compressed waist, prominent bosom,
and emphasised haunches. But it is many, perhaps forty, thousands
years earlier! One is led to wonder whether this type of human
female--to-day expressed with such masterly skill by Boldini--may not
be at the back of the mind of a portion of the human race--that which
populated what are now the shores of the Mediterranean, and probably
came there travelling northwards from the centre of Africa. Possibly
they brought with them that tendency to, and admiration for,
megalopygy which is evidenced by the makers of the earliest known
palaeolithic cave sculptures (the Aurignacians), and has persisted in
some degree ever since in Europe--a tendency and a taste which are on
the one hand totally absent in the East and Far East (Japan), and on
the other hand have a strong development in the modern Bushmen (and
the related Hottentots), an African race, and like the Spanish
cave-men, rock painters.

[Illustration: Plate VIII.--Votary or priestess of the goddess to whom
snakes were sacred. The original is a statuette in faience, ten inches
high, and was discovered by Sir Arthur Evans in the palace at Knossos
in Crete. It dates from 1600 B.C.]

I am able to reproduce here (Plates VIII and IX), through the kindness
of Sir Arthur Evans and Dr. Hogarth, the keeper of the Ashmolean
Museum at Oxford, two very interesting drawings--showing certain
features in the dress of women in the prehistoric race which inhabited
the island of Crete for some three thousand years previous to the date
of these representations, which is about 1600 B.C. They are
interesting to compare both with the much more ancient figures from
the Spanish cave and with modern female costume. The first (Plate
VIII) is a figure in coloured pottery (faience), representing either a
votary or priestess of a goddess to whom snakes were sacred. The
petticoat of this lady is very modern, being long, decorated with
flounces (a series of five) and bell-shaped. The dress is further
remarkable for a tight ring-like girdle which greatly compresses the
waist and emphasises the broad