it is now generally admitted that ultimately engraving on cavern walls became subservient to painting in colours and free-hand drawing.
Among the fauna depicted on the walls of Altamira, and Marsoulas neither the reindeer nor any of the extinct animals are to be found. Though distant from the principal centre of the painted caverns of Perigord, they are regarded by MM Cartailhac and Breuil as having passed through the same phases of evolutionary art. The usual animals in these caves are bison, horse, goat and stag. Besides animal forms, there are groups of enigmatical signs, graffiti and a sort of pictographic arrangement of coloured dots and lines, structures of a tectiform character supposed to represent wooden enclosures, etc. Man is also represented by about a dozen incomplete designs, badly drawn, grotesque in character, and altogether inferior in execution to the animal figures. But this peculiarity need not cause surprise, as it is a feature of Palæolithic art, in general; for no human representation hitherto known of this kind, whether engraved or painted, goes beyond the artistic efforts of children.
An exception, however, may be made to this sweeping generalization in deference to the opinion of the late M. Piette, who entertained the theory that Palæolithic man first acquired the art of sculpturing animals, and that, after practising high and low relief, he learned ultimately to draw incised figures on the flat. This theory was based on the discovery
