Page:Palæolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe.djvu/299

Rh had the body covered with a uniform layer of red ochre. Also, in some instances, certain parts of the animal were done with a coating of black and red, thus producing a brown colour. Others again had the head or feet painted in one colour, and the rest of the body in a different one. A number of these painted figures had over and above a layer of stalagmite, varying in thickness from a few millimetres to as many centimetres.

The pictures continued along the whole length of the cave at various heights on the walls up to 4 metres, and sometimes they reached as low as the floor. The largest figure, an auroch painted entirely in ochre, measured 2.70 metres in length, and the smallest only 20 centimetres. The other figures ranged in size between these dimensions. The total number of figures observed and measured by MM. Capitan and Breuil in Font-de-Gaume were—80 aurochs, 49; indeterminate animals, 11; reindeer, 4; stag, 1; equidæ, 4; antelopes, 3; mammoths, 2; geometrical and scalariform signs, 6.

Two illustrations of the painted animals are reproduced on PI. XXII. (Rev. de l'École d'Anthrop., 1902, p. 237). The first (A) represents an auroch traced on an irregular rock surface, and measures 1.50 metres in length and 1.25 metres in height. The body is painted in dark ochre, the feet and hind quarter are in a still deeper shade, and the snout is brown.

The second illustration (B) is a very striking picture of two opposing reindeer, the whole measuring 2.10 metres in length and 1.30 metres in height, but only part of it is here reproduced. The animal on the right shows particularly well the digits of the palmated tyne over the forehead so characteristic of the reindeer, and the head is engraved instead of being painted like the rest of the body. That on the left is also partly painted and partly engraved. The dorsal contour is formed of two lines, the outer being red and the inner black. Its horns are also black, while those of the reindeer are red, except the palmated tyne, which is black.

MM. Capitan and Breuil suggest that the paintings in the P