lushing.] O.fo [Nov. 6, 



saplings were cut off squarely and sufficiently smoothed, little clieck- 

 lines, such as one may see on the sawed-off end of a seasoned stick, 

 always appeared, radiating from the heart toward, but not quite to, the 

 circumference of the severed segment. Thus the figure came to be exag- 

 gerated decoratively, and associated with the end of another special kind 

 of working tool and, for like mythic reasons, was retained. The steps 

 by which these originally half-natural or accidental markings became 

 developed as decorations, then localized on special tool-handles, and 

 then so characteristic of special types of tools as to be laboriously repro- 

 duced even in other material than wood — like the horn and bone some- 

 times substituted therefor— could only have been taken very slowly. 



Still more confidently may this be affirmed of the art displayed on 

 objects less evidently of local origin, for they illustrated an equally 

 slow and much longer continued process in the development of conven- 

 tional art, that of survival — as on the box -tablets described ; which, 

 being no longer held together with double cords or strands lashed 

 around them and tied over their middles with square- or reef-knots 

 (double figure of eight knots) had come to be secured with gum and 

 pegs, yet must still be mythically tied with pfdnted strands and knots in 

 imitation of the "good old way." In this connection I would ag:.in 

 refer to the superb celt-handle, the decorations on which were so very 

 highly conventionalized and so modified by the introduction of shell- 

 volute figures and of certain eye-marks derived from knots (the one 

 kind of figure being generic on the shell tool handles just referred to, 

 the other on the crooked adze handles, as shown in Fig. 2. Plate XXXII), 

 that it was with difficulty the main lines and bands on the shaft and 

 head could be recognized at all, as survivals of the wrappings or bind- 

 ings on simpler and earlier forms of this kind of instrument. 



If these forms of decorations on tools, and their association with spe- 

 cial parts thereof — whether of extraneous or of autochonous origin, pos- 

 sessed as they were, of so high a degree of conventionalization — were 

 of great age in development, this must to a much greater extent have 

 been the case with the yet higher degree of conventionalization shown 

 in the representation of face and bod}" marks on animal carvings and 

 paintings in the collection. In the first place, these marks on, for in- 

 stance, the faces of the figureheads, were not irregular, as they are seen 

 to be on the faces of the natural animals they represented. While the 

 forms of these figureheads were realistic to a degree, the painted or incised 

 fiice marks were remarkably conventional, regular, and almost perfectly 

 symmetrical. That is, stripes were represented as clean bands, patches 

 or spots as neat circles or figures, sometimes elaborated into highly or- 

 nate curved devices. Yet as a whole, these painted or incised face mark- 

 ings were so distributed and contrasted as to look startlingly natural 

 when seen at a distance. To give an idea of the great degree of conven- 

 tionalization thus attested, I have only to state that this kind of highly 

 artificial and ornate representation of the face markings of animals be- 



