(Some South African tribes actually hunt the lion on foot with javelins, and I have myself more than once observed the courage of the East African natives in similar circumstances.)
It is indeed not surprising that the cave-dweller of those days took his models from the ranks of the animal creation. All his thoughts and efforts were directed to the chase; he had no resources but in this pursuit, and he had to carry on, day and night perhaps, a fierce struggle for existence with wild beasts. One can thus follow the development of the human race through the course of time from the primitive sketches of beasts down to our own days, in which it has been reserved for the hand of man to execute masterpieces inspired by genius, and in which man makes the sun to serve him in depicting and preserving representations of all that lives and moves, creeps and flies. By means of the sketches of animals laboriously scratched on pieces of ivory by the Cave men of Southern Europe, we make the acquaintance of the long-haired prototypes of the living elephants of to-day. These animals were the most coveted big game in Europe. Clearly recognisable sketches of reindeer tell us that a climate like that of the northern steppes prevailed at the time; others of horses show that the wild horse was then to be found in Europe; those of the aurochs prove the existence of that animal. There is a remarkably close resemblance between the style of all these drawings and that of the rude sketches made by the Esquimaux of our own day. Some such Esquimaux sketches of animals on walrus tusks, at the most a hundred years old, are to be found in the Berlin Ethnographical Museum. Interesting, too, are the sketches of giraffes from the hands of ancient Egyptian artists. They show us that the artist of those days in drawing animals allowed a loose rein to his fancy and imagination. Thousands of years must separate these representations of animals from the sketches of Asiatic wild life which Sven Hedin discovered at Togri-sai-Tale near Lôb-nor. They are scratched on bright green slate, and depict yaks, wild asses and tigers, and the hunting of them with bow and arrow. They appear to be of the same kind as the animal-sketches made by the South African Bushmen, discovered by Fritsch in the year 1863. These cave pictures show us various members of the fauna of Cape Colony, which has already been to so great an extent exterminated. During the period of the Middle Ages a more perfect style of representing animals was gradually evolved, but even about the year 1720 we find representations that are inaccurate to an incredible extent, and, indeed, so recently as the early part of last century, one sees in the travels of the French naturalist Le Vaillant, in the picture of a female hippopotamus, a proof that the development of animal-drawing had as yet made little progress.
ANCIENT EGYPTIAN REPRESENTATIONS OF GIRAFFES AND OTHER ANIMALS. (THE BIRD AT THE TOP ON THE LEFT IS PLAINLY RECOGNISABLE AS THE SHOE-BILLED STORK—BALAENICEPS REX. NOW IT SEEMS ONLY TO BE FOUND IN THE MARSHES OF THE UPPER NILE. I HAVE TO THANK PROFESSOR HOMMEL OF MUNICH FOR THESE ILLUSTRATIONS, WHICH ARE TAKEN FROM “MONUMENTS ET MÉMOIRES DE L’ACADÉMIE DES INSCRIPTIONS ET BELLES LETTRES.”)
SKETCHES OF ANIMALS MADE BY THE BUSHMEN. (DISCOVERED IN SOUTH AFRICA BY PROFESSOR G. FRITSCH IN THE ‘SIXTIES, AND REPRODUCED BY HIS KIND PERMISSION.)
But what a difference in drawing and technique has come about in less than a hundred years! One need only compare the pictures of those times with the works of our own days, to be convinced that, besides artistic execution, there is now an increasingly exacting demand for the precise truth. Indeed, one of the first points to be insisted on is that photographic pictures shall not be altered, worked up—in word, in any way “retouched.” Only on this condition can they really claim to be—that which in a special sense they ought to be—true to nature, absolutely trustworthy “nature-documents.” This distinguishes the photograph from works of art executed by the hand of man, which must conform to each individual conception of the artist.
It is a hard saying that the modern cultured man is becoming, continually more and more estranged from nature. But in this matter let us take the standpoint of the optimist, who says to himself that there must be a reaction—a conscious, deliberate return, which indeed will represent the result of the highest stage of culture. There is an increasing perception of the existence in our home landscape of an ideal worth, that we have not yet been able sufficiently to estimate. To-day already there is a movement on all sides, and the demand is heard, ever stronger and clearer, for the protection of the beauties of nature. We must protect Nature in the widest sense of the word. And even if, in the stern progress of evolving civilisation, much that remains in the treasury of primitive nature must be destroyed, we shall be able long to preserve and rejoice in much else.
A SMALL HERD OF FEMALE BLACK-TAILED ANTELOPES RUNNING AWAY THROUGH HIGH GRASS.