It is a curious reflection that although palaeolithic art has been known and recognized as such for over a century, and despite the fact that during this time an enormous volume of literature has accumulated on the subject, yet the publications consist almost exclusively of articles dealing with limited aspects. These comprise descriptions of individual finds, or particular sites, but there are virtually no works on any scale to present the art as a whole in its so-called ‘mobiliary’ manifestations (that is to say, the decoration of loose and individual objects), together with the decorations found on the walls of caves. There have of course been many contributions of significance to certain general issues, such as chronology and correlation with the cultural succession; among the most important early works on the mobiliary art for instance is Piette’s L’art pendant l’âge du renne of 1906. Again, in his magnificent pioneering studies on the sites of Altamira, Font de Gaume, and Les Combarelles, the Abbé Breuil devoted a number of chapters to general discussion of fundamental importance; many of these deal with all sides of the evidence in connexion with different problems, such as representation of different types of animals. But in no case has the archaeological public been rewarded with a full-scale work on the art as a whole by the greatest living authority. Although in his introduction the author of the work under review disclaims any intention to provide either a treatise or a complete corpus of the artistic achievements of the Palaeolithic, and describes his work rather as a ‘panoramic view of that prodigious phenomenon which is the birth and development of the most ancient art in the history of man‘, yet he has in fact gone some considerable way to fill this important gap.