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EVOLUTION OF ELEPHANTS 379
ber
8, 1903. The figure is only traced in silhouette, eye and ear are
lacking and only a single foreleg and hindleg are drawn.* The tusk
indicated by a short stroke and the absence of any mane, there being
only markings indicating a few stiff hairs along the spine, combine to
prove that we have here essentially the same type as that figured on
the cave wall of Pindal. This confirms the conjecture that the mammoths
both draughtsmen were striving to figure were very different in
appearance from those which served as models for the prehistoric
artists of the Dordogne caverns.f In the southern part of the
department of Oran, Algeria, there have been found engraved on the face
of rocks by natives of the land a certain number of elephant figures.
These representations are believed to be of great antiquity, and some
of them may possibly date back to the early period of the cave dwellers
of the Dordogne. A curious example of the North African rock sculptures
shows five somewhat grotesque elephant figures, engraved and polished,
two bulls and two cows, accompanied by some human figures, these being
placed as though to give, by contrast, an adequate idea of the immense
size of the quadrupeds. This sculpture is on a rock between Ouedj and
Tathania in Southern Oran.î Here the cows appear to be without tusks,
those of the bulls being very short. The same holds good of another
similar rock sculpture from the same region.** Whether it would be safe
to draw any morphological conclusions from the rude figures of these
primitive artists appears very doubtful.
*H.
Alcalde del Rio, Abbé Henri Breuil, and Rev. Father Lorenzo Sierra, "
Les Cavernes de la Région Cantabrique (Espagne), " "Peintures et
Gravures Murales des Cavernes Paléolitiques," Monaco, 1911; published
under the auspices of H. S. H. Prince Albert I of Monaco. See pp.
61,66, and PI. XLIV and XLV.
tOp. cit., p. 129; see Fig. 117, p. 131, and PI. LXVIII.
f'Les
Cavernes de la Région Cantabrique (Espagne)," by H. Alcalde del Rio,
Abbé Henri Breuil and the Rev. Father Lorenzo Sierra. Monaco, 1911;
published under the auspices of H. S. H. Prince Albert of Monaco. See
p. 239, Fig. 246.
**Op. cit., Fig. 247, p. 240.
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