ON THE RELATION OF NATURAL SCIENCE TO ART. 679 
faithfully as possible such animals with which they were familiar ; 
whereasthe Aztecs, a people of comparatively high civilization, indulged 
in fancies of more than Hastern hideousness. It would almost appear 
as if bad taste were associated with a middle stage of culture. 
With regard to the teaching of anatomy in schools of art, the above 
proves that it should not be confined to human Seesayey myology, 
and the doctrine of locomotion alone, but that it should also endeavor— 
and the task is not difficult—to familiarize the student with the funda- 
mental principles of vertebral morphology. 
Botanists should in their turn point out such violations of the laws 
of the metamorphosis of plants as must, no doubt, frequently strike them 
in the acanthus arabesques, palmettos, rosettes, and scrolls handed 
down to us from the ancients. For obvious reasons, however, these 
can not affect them as painfully as malformations of men and animals, 
being in themselves repulsive to natural feelings, would the compara- 
tive anatomist. Moreover, a beneficial revolution has recently taken 
place in floral ornament. The displacement of Gothic art by the 
antique during the Renaissance had fed to a dearth of ideas in decora- 
tive art. The rich fancy and naive obser Goon of nature displayed 
upon the capitals of many a cloister had gradually given way to a 
fixed conventionalism no longer founded on ns rauch, at Car- 
‘ara, in search of a model for the eagles on his monuments, was the 
first to turn to a golden eagle, accidentally captured on the spot, in- 
stead of to one of the statues of Jupiter. It was then that, towards 
a middle of the century, decorative art began to shake off its fetters, 
and, combining truthfulness with beauty, returned to the study and 
artistic reproduction of the living plants with which we are surrounded. 
In this respect the Japanese had long ago adopted a better course, and 
to them we have since become indebted for many suggestions. Thus 
highly welcome additions were made to the decoration of our homes 
and the ornaments of female dress. 
In one direction, however, it will be observed that men of science 
readily dispense with a strict observation of the laws of nature in art, 
at the risk of being charged with inconsistency. In works of art, both 
ancient and modern, flying and soaring figures occur in thousands. 
These, no doubt, sin against the omnipotent and deeply felt laws of 
gravity quite as much as the most loathsome creations of a depraved 
imagination against the principles of comparative anatomy, familiar 
only to a fewadepts. Nevertheless they donot displease us. We pre- 
fer them without wings, because wings are contrary to the type, and 
could be of no use to them without an enormous bulk of muscle. But 
we do not mind the Madonna Sistina standing on clouds and the sub- 
ordinate figures kneeling on the same impossible ground. ‘‘ Ezekiel’s 
Vision” in the Palazzo Pitti is certainly less acceptable. But to quote 
modern examples, Flaxman’s ‘Gods flying to the aid of the Trojans,” 
or Cornelius’s Apocalyptical riders, and Ary Schefter’s divine Francesca 
