DECOUATIVE AL'T OF THE IMJIANS. 



483 



Schurtz* and by Professor A. D. F. Hamlin, f who has treated in a 

 series of essays the evohijion of decorative motives. 



In speaking of the process of conventionalization or degeneration 

 of realistic motives, Professor Hamlin says: "Indeed, this degenera- 

 tion may reasonably be accepted as suggesting that the geometric 

 forms which it approaches were already in habitual nse when it be- 

 gan, and that the direction of the degeneration was determined by a 





<. 



Fig. 16. Shamanistic Coat of Eskimo. 



preexisting habit or ' expectancy ' (as Dr. Colley March calls it) of 

 geometric form acquired in skenomorphic decoration " J (i. e., in a 

 form developed from technical motives). At another place § he 

 says: "After having undergone in its own home such series of modi- 

 fications, the motive becomes known to the artists of some race or 



* H. Schurtz, ' Urgeschichte der Kultur,' p. 540. 

 t The American Architect and Building News, 1898. 

 tliid., p. 93. 

 § Ibid., p. 35. 



