The illustrations in this chapter are (with the exception of Fig. 7) copies, greatly reduced in size, of faithful representations of the great hairy elephant or mammoth which still survived in southern France in the days when the caves were occupied and decorated by men. I am indebted to the valuable little book "Repertoire de l'Art Quatermaire," by M. Salomon Reinach, for these outlines carefully drawn by him from various large illustrations by the use of a tracing and reducing instrument. In the next chapter I have given examples from the same source of similar drawings of other animals.
There are five kinds of artistic work of Palæolithic age found in the caverns of France and Spain; namely (1) small solid carvings (complete all round) in bone, ivory, or stone; (2) small engravings in sunk outline on similar material, rarely with relief of the outlined figure; (3) large stone statues, 2 ft. to 6 ft. across, in high relief, with complete modelling of the visible surface; (4) rock engravings and paintings on the walls and roofs of caverns or rock shelters, often partly outlined by engraving and scraping of the surface, and then completed in black or red paint or in several colours (black, red, yellow, white); they are of large size, from 2 to 5 ft. in cross measurement; (5) models in clay, one side only shown, the other resting on rock; a few incomplete clay models of this nature representing the bison of about 2 ft. in
length, have recently been discovered in one of the French caverns, and are the only examples of modelling in clay by the Palæolithic men yet discovered.
Fig. 8.—Outline engravings of mammoths on the wall of the cavern known as the "Font de Gaume," near Eyzies (Dordogne). Each figure is about 2 ft. long.
Our figures of the mammoth are (excepting Fig. 7) all of the fourth class—namely, rock-paintings in one colour (black or red) partly engraved and scraped. The originals are from 1-1/2 ft. to 2-1/2 ft. long. The mammoths given in Fig. 8 are carefully copied from engravings discovered, reproduced, and described by M. Breuil and his fellow-workers. They are on the walls of the cavern known as the "Font de Gaume," in the commune of Tayac in the Dordogne. Those copied in Fig. 9 and Fig. 10, A, were discovered on the walls of the cave of Les Combarelles in the same district.
