THE GREAT UNKNOWN. 



below immediately, and attempted to reproduce 

 what his eye was still filled with. Now, what 

 could one expect under such conditions? Of 

 course, the artist was not a zoologist, or we 

 should have had a zoologist's report. Would the 

 drawing so produced be of any value? Surely 

 yes ; of great value. It would doubtless be a tol- 

 erably faithful representation of the general ;ij>- 

 I tea ranee of the object seen, but nothing more; its 

 form, and position, and colour, and such of the 

 details as the observer had distinctly noticed, and 

 marked down, so to speak, in his mind, would be 

 given; but a great deal of the details would be 

 put in by mere guess. When a person draws from 

 an object before him, he measures the various 

 lines, curves, angles, relative distances, and so on, 

 with his eye, one by one, and puts them down 

 seriatim ; ever looking at the part of the original 

 on which he is working, for correction. But no 

 possibility of doing this was open to the artistic 

 midshipman; he had merely his vivid, but neces- 

 sarily vague, idea of the whole before him as the 

 original from which he drew. Who is there that 

 could carry all the details of an object in the 

 memory, after a few minutes' gaze, and that, too, 

 under strong excitement? This was not the case 

 even of a cool professional artist, called in to 

 view an object for the purpose of depicting it ; in 

 all probability the officer had not thought of 

 sketching it till all was over, and had made no 

 precise observations, his mind being mainly occu- 

 pied by wonder. He sits down, pencil in hand ; he 

 dashes in the general outline at once; now he 

 comes to details,— say the muzzle, the facial angle ; 

 —of course, his figure must have some facial angle, 

 some outline of muzzle ; but probably he had not 

 particularly noticed that point. What shall he 

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