2 7 2 



NA TURE 



[July i 7) 1884 



collecting the nests. There is an almost inexhaustible 

 supply of guano in the caves, and the number of bats 

 and swifts in them is so enormous that if they are undis- 

 turbed a regular quantity may be taken out yearly. 

 Should the visitor to the Health Exhibition who obtains 

 some of this far-famed and mysterious soup have little 

 relish for it, as is not unlikely, he will at any rate have 

 the satisfaction of knowing that he has before him a dish 

 the principal ingredient of which was formed by the little 

 swifts and bats which inhabit the Gomanton Caves in the 

 centre of the magnificent tropical forests of North Borneo. 

 There is probably no other article of food in the Health 

 Exhibition, or in all Europe, more extraordinary in the 

 mode of production, or in the method and circumstances 

 under which it is obtained. 



ON THE EVOLUTION OF FORMS OF 



ORNAMENT 1 



II. 



THE leaf in Dracunculus has a very peculiar shape: it 

 consists of a number of lobes which are disposed upon 

 a stalk which is more or less forked (tends more or less to 

 dichotomise). If you call to your minds some of 

 the Pompeian wall decorations, you will perceive that 

 similar forms occur there in all possible variations. Stems 



are regularly seen in decorations that run perpendicularly, 

 surrounded by leaves of this description. Before this, 

 these suggested the idea of a misunderstood (or very 

 conventional) perspective representation of a circular 

 flower. Now the form also occurs in this fashion, and 

 thus negatives the idea of a perspective representation of 

 a closed flower. It is out of this form in combination 

 with the flower-form that the series of patterns was de- 

 veloped which we have become acquainted with in 

 Roman art, especially in the ornament of Titus's Ther- 

 mae and in the Renaissance period in Raphael's work. 

 [The lecturer here explained a series of illustrations of 

 the ornaments referred to (Figs. 12, 13, 14).] 



1 From a paper by Pro f . facohsthal in the Transactions of the Archaeo- 

 logical Society of Berlin. Continued from y. 251. 



The attempt to determine the course of the first group 

 of forms has been to a certain extent successful, but we 

 meet greater difficulties in the study of the second. 



It is difficult to obtain a firm basis on which to conduct 

 our investigations from the historical or geographical point 

 of view into this form of art, which was introduced into 

 the West by Arabico-Moorish culture, and which has 

 since been further developed here. There is only one 

 method open to us in the determination of the form, 

 which is to pass gradually from the richly developed and 

 strongly differentiated forms to the smaller and simpler 



f| :V~ 



ones, even if these latter should have appeared contem- 

 poraneously or even later than the former. Here we have 

 again to refer to the fact that has already been men- 

 tioned, to wit, that Oriental art remained stationary 

 throughout long periods of time. In point of fact, the 

 simpler forms are invariably characterised by a nearer and 

 nearer approach to the more ancient patterns and also to 

 the natural flower-forms of the Aracere. We find the 

 spathe, again, sometimes drawn like an Acanthus leaf, more 

 often, however, bulged out, coming to be more and more of 

 a mere outline figure, and becoming converted into a sort 

 of background ; then the spadix, generally conical in 



shape, sometimes, however, altogether replaced by a per- 

 fect thistle, at other times again by a pomegranate. An- 

 bervillein his magnificent work "L'Ornement des Tissus," 

 is astonished to find the term pomegranate-pattern al- 

 most confined to these forms, since their central part is 

 generally formed of a thistle-form. As far as I can dis- 

 cover in the literature that is at my disposal, this question 

 has not had any particular attention devoted to it except 

 in the large work upon Ottoman architecture, published 

 in Constantinople under the patronage of Edhem Pasha. 

 The pomegranate that has served as the original of the 

 pattern in question is in this work surrounded with leaves 



