[Illustration: FIG. 182. Modern descendants of the four principal types of the horse family which roamed over western Europe in Upper Palæolithic times: (_A_) the plateau, desert, or Celtic horse, (_B_) the steppe or Przewalski horse, (_C_) the forest or Nordic horse, and (_D_) the kiang or wild ass of the Asiatic steppes.] The successive faunal phases of Magdalenian times, beginning with the early cold and moist or tundra period, have been determined with wonderful precision by Schmidt from the animal remains found associated with the lower, middle, and upper Magdalenian cultures in the grotto and cavern deposits of northern Switzerland, of the upper Rhine, and of the upper Danube. This region was lacking in some of the characteristic animals seen in Dordogne, yet these invaluable records show that throughout the entire period of Magdalenian times, probably extending over some thousands of years, the forests, meadows, and river borders of western Europe maintained the entire existing, or rather prehistoric, forest and meadow faunæ. The royal stag, or red deer (_Cervus elaphus_), was no longer accompanied by the giant deer (_Megaceros_), which apparently left this region of Europe in Aurignacian times, but the maral or Persian deer (_Cervus maral_) occasionally appears; both the stag and the roe-deer (_Capreolus_) were especially abundant in southwestern Europe and the Cantabrian Mountains of northern Spain, where the stag became the favorite subject of the Magdalenian artists at the same time that the reindeer was the favorite subject in the region of Dordogne. In the forests were also the brown bear, the lynx, the badger, the marten, and in the streams the beaver; tree squirrels (_Sciurus vulgaris_) appear for the first time; and in Dordogne rabbits and hares become numerous. Among birds we observe the grouse and the raven. The wild boar (_Sus scrofa ferus_) was occasionally found in the region of the Danube and the Rhine, but abounded in southwestern Europe and the Pyrenees. The two dominant forms of meadow life surviving from the earliest Pleistocene times, and widely distributed throughout the Magdalenian are the bison (_B. priscus_) and the wild cattle (_Bos primigenius_); of these animals the bison appears to have been the more hardy, and seeking a more northerly range, while the urus was extremely abundant in southwestern France and the Pyrenees. [Illustration: FIG. 183. The desert or Celtic horse, with delicate head, long, slender limbs, and short back, from a painting on the ceiling of Altamira, in northern Spain. The horse is painted in red ochre with black manganese outlines. The eye, ear, mouth, nostrils, and chin are carefully engraved. After Breuil.]