Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, May 1885 — John Shaqi
Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, May 1885Various
History
Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, May 1885
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals
present day with three-toed feet, exactly resembling those of their
half-forgotten ancestor the Pliocene hipparion.
The reason why we know so much about the horses of the cave period
is, I am bound to admit, simply and solely because the man of the
period ate them. Hippophagy has always been popular in France; it was
practised by pre-Glacial man in the caves of Périgord, and revived
with immense enthusiasm by the gourmets of the Boulevards after the
siege of Paris and the hunger of the Commune. The cave men hunted and
killed the wild horse of their own times, and one of the best of their
remaining works of art represents a naked hunter attacking two horses,
while a huge snake winds itself unperceived behind close to his heel.
In this rough prehistoric sketch one seems to catch some faint antique
foreshadowing of the rude humor of the “Petit Journal pour Rire.” Some
archæologists even believe that the horse was domesticated by the cave
men as a source of food, and argue that the familiarity with its form
shown in the drawings could only have been acquired by people who knew
the animal in its domesticated state; they declare that the cave man
was obviously horsey. But all the indications seem to me to show that
tame animals were quite unknown in the age of the cave men. The mammoth
certainly was never domesticated; yet there is a famous sketch of the
huge beast upon a piece of his own ivory, discovered in the cave of
La Madelaine by Messrs. Lartet and Christy, and engraved a hundred
times in works on archæology, which forms one of the finest existing
relics of pre-Glacial art. In another sketch, less well known, but
not unworthy of admiration, the early artist has given us with a few
rapid but admirable strokes his own reminiscence of the effect produced
upon him by the sudden onslaught of the hairy brute, tusks erect and
mouth wide open, a perfect glimpse of elephantine fury. It forms a
capital example of early impressionism, respectfully recommended to the
favorable attention of Mr. J. M. Whistler.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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