File:The Quarterly journal of the Geological Society of London (12736686174).jpg

592
W. BOYD DAWKINS ON THE MAMMAL-FAUNA.
Fig. 1. — Incised Jig ure of Horse, i.
The most important discovery of the handiwork of man is the head
and fore quarters of a horse (fig. 1) incised on a smoothed and
rounded fragment of rib, cut short off at one end and broken at the
other. On the flat side the head is represented with the nostrils and
mouth and neck carefully drawn. A series of fine oblique lines show
that the animal was hog-maned. They stop at the bend of the back,
which is very correctly drawn. Indeed the whole is very well done
and is evidently a sketch from the life. As is usually the case, the
feet are not represented.
On comparing this engraving with those of horses from the caves
of Perigord * and from the recently described cave of the Kesslerloch t,
near Thayingen, in Switzerland, the identity of style renders the
conclusion tolerably certain that the palaeolithic hunters who occu-
pied the Creswell cave during the accumulation of the upper part of
the cave-earth were the same as those who hunted the Reindeer and
Horse in Switzerland and the south of France.
A bone awl was also found, composed of the metacarpal of a Rein-
deer, and carefully rounded and smoothed ; it had been broken into
three pieces before it was thrown away. By a fortunate chance I
found two out of the three fragments.
The pointed antlers may have been used by man ; but they may
also be the result of the action of carbonic acid in wearing away
the bruised surfaces, as we shall presently see.
Of the flint implements it is only necessary to say that they are
all of the types which I have described, with two exceptions, the one
being an oval trimmed flake, and the other a double scraper of the
The quartzite implements are of the forms already described : and
same form as those of the caves of Southern France and of the
Kesslerloch.
of those made of clay iron-stone, only one demands special notice.
It is a small oval implement of the St.-Acheul and Moustier type,
blunt at the base and tapering to a rounded point (fig. 2).
The numerous split quartzite pebbles are of the same sort as those
recently described by Captain Jones, U. S. A., as being in use among
the American Indians of Wyoming. He writes, " Certain articles of
a very rude character are still in use to some extent among our
western Indians, and even in the case of such tribes as have now

• Reliquiae Aquitanicae.
  

t See ' Excavations at the Kesslerloch Cave, near Thayingen.' By Conrad