In connection with art, the majestic form of the bison seemed to strike the fancy of the artist more than the less-imposing outlines of the wild cattle; there are perhaps fifty drawings of the bison to one of the _Bos_. Among the forest and meadow life, not recognized in the fossil remains, but clearly distinguished in the work of the artists, are two types of horses, the forest or Nordic horse, related to the northern or draught horse, and the diminutive plateau or desert horse (_E. caballus celticus_) related to the Arab. With the forest life should also be numbered the cave bear (_Ursus spelæus_) of southwestern Europe and the moose (_Alces_), indicated by the artists of Aurignacian times as present in the Cantabrian Pyrenees. [Illustration: FIG. 184. Heads of four chamois engraved on a fragment of reindeer horn, from the grotto of Gourdan, Haute-Garonne. After Piette.] It is the above entire Eurasiatic forest and meadow fauna which survived all the climatic vicissitudes of Pleistocene time, and which alone remained in western Europe to the very close of the Upper Palæolithic culture, and into the period of the arrival of the Neolithic race. The descent of the European and Asiatic alpine types of mammals to the lower hills and valleys is one of the most striking episodes of Magdalenian times. The argali sheep (_Ovis argaloides_) of western Asia had already appeared in the upper Danubian region during the Aurignacian; it is replaced in Magdalenian times by the ibex (_Ibex priscus_), and by the chamois, which descended along the northern slopes of the Alps and of the Pyrenees, and became numbered among the most highly favored subjects of the Magdalenian artists, especially in the mobile art of ivory and bone, and in the decoration of their spear throwers and _bâtons de commandement_. From the mountains also come the pikas or tailless hares (_Lagomys pusillus_), the alpine marmot (_Arctomys marmotta_), the alpine vole (_Arvicola nivalis_), and the alpine ptarmigan (_Lagopus alpinus_). THE TUNDRA CLIMATE OF EARLY MAGDALENIAN TIMES