SKETCH OF L. D. VON SCHWEINITZ. 833 



It may be remarked, with reference to plant forms, that the 

 boreal flora of that epoch, not being at all menacing, could fur- 

 nish little food for superstition, and no drawings of plants are 

 found in the caves. 



On the whole, the condition of the art of design with primi- 

 tive man appears to be in complete harmony with the meaning 

 we have attributed to design itself it being regarded as inspired 

 by the belief in the existence of a material relation between a 

 being and its image, and in the possibility of acting on the object 

 by means of the picture. 



Consequently, the principle of painting is not to be found in a 

 natural tendency of primitive man to the artificial imitation of 

 living Nature, but seems to be derived from the wish to subject 

 that Nature to its wants and to subdue it. 



By progressive improvements, the art of drawing has gradu- 

 ally lost its primitive significance and original meaning till it has 

 become what it is now. It does not differ, however, much from 

 what it was originally ; for, while primitive man fancied he could 

 reach the living being in its image, it is still life that living man 

 seeks to-day in works of art. Translated for The Popular Sci- 

 ence Monthly from the Revue 8cientifique. 



-- 



SKETCH OF L. D. VON SCHWEINITZ. 



DURING colonial times in America, and even down into the 

 present century, science advanced over a much obstructed 

 path. Not having then attained to its present power and esteem, 

 there were but few of its votaries whose whole time and best 

 energies it could command. The explorations by which the ani- 

 mals, plants, and minerals of the vast Western continent were 

 made known to science were accomplished in large part by nat- 

 uralists who either followed some other vocation as a means of 

 livelihood, or were mainly occupied by some other career to 

 which they felt more strongly bound. Franklin was a printer 

 and later a statesman, being an electrician only at odd times; 

 John Bartram was a farmer ; Mitchell, Hosack, and Barton were 

 physicians ; while Muhlenberg and the subject of this article were 

 clergymen. 



Lewis David von Schweinitz was born, February 13, 1780, 

 at Bethlehem, Pa., then a Moravian Church settlement which had 

 been founded by his family in 1741. His father. Baron Hans 

 Christian Alexander von Schweinitz, came from an ancient and 

 distinguished family residing on the ancestral estate called Leubla, 

 in the present limits of Saxony. That he was a man of stable 



VOL, XLIV. 61 



