Page:Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe.djvu/296

224 characters of these two species of horses. As this point is important, I will quote their exact words :—

Since the characters of the two kinds of horses, as described in the above extract, are in keeping with the more or less precise evidence to the same effect gathered from other stations of the same period, they may be at once accepted as correct.

Font-de-Gaume.

The Cave of Font-de-Gaume is situated in a small side valley opening into the valley of the Beune, from which it is distant about 300 metres, and a little over a mile to the west is the famous station of Les Eyzies (see Fig. 31). The entrance, which is half-way up a cretaceous slope, and about 20 metres above the floor of the valley, leads into a tunnel, 123 metres long, with three lateral branches. The breadth varies from 2 to 3 metres, and the height from 5 to 6 metres, but occasionally the passage becomes greatly contracted.

The animal figures begin at 65.70 metres from the entrance, in the midst of a mass of stalagmite. The first thing to be noticed with regard to the pictures in this cave is that they are entirely different from those in Combarelles. In the latter, as we have just seen, they consisted almost exclusively of engravings of the various animals, deeply cut on the face of the rock ; but in Font-de-Gaume they are real paintings in ochre, or black, or sometimes in several colours. Nearly all these paintings are outlined in fine incised lines, heightened in effect by a black-painted band. Sometimes certain parts of the animal, such as the feet or head, were painted black ; at other times the whole body was black, thus forming a true silhouette. More frequently, however, the figures outlined in black lines