TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 655 
Faroe strain. It is quite likely that the explanations given by Cossar Ewart and 
Wendel may be regarded as applicable to the arrangements found here, Taking 
200, one group, mostly from Connaught, 54 per cent. had light hair and light-blue 
eyes; 12 per cent. had black hair, and of these 6 per cent. had brown eyes. 
In a second group, entirely local and special, light hair and light-blue eyes pre- 
dominate. The dark type and sallow type are also in evidence. The influence 
of towns is less marked in the west of Ireland than on the eastern side, and much 
less so than in England; so that the tendency to darkening which has been marked 
in town populations in England does not show in Ireland, 
6. A Terminology of Decorative Art. By Professor J. L. Myrss, J.A. 
Decorative art, as the subject of anthropological study, needs analysis, on the 
technological side, in order to describe and define the precise contribution made 
by the artist’s hand to the decoration of the object. So long as the decorative 
motives are recognisable attempts to represent some actual object, such as an 
animal or a plant, or part of one, description in general terms is easy ; and, for all 
beyond this, graphic illustration is inevitable. But in the more abstract, and 
particularly for ‘ geometrical,’ types of decoration the actual processes employed 
by the artist stand in a more important relation to the completed work, Artisti- 
cally the effects produced by drawing on the same surface (a) a double series of 
alternate triangles and (6) the limiting lines of a band of continuous chevrons 
BOD ISS INST QPLAPT, 
BM res CNN 
are practically indistinguishable; but technologically their origin, affinities, and 
potential development are quite different. For example, simple enhancement of the 
construction lines leads in the case of (a) to patterns like (c) and (d) 
in the case of (5) to patterns like (e) and (/). 
TITTY $$ JRRZ; 
A SV NGG 
In such cases the mere graphic reproduction of the ornament is not an adequate 
description, still less a definition of it. On the other hand, a sufficiently precise 
terminology would enable a student at a distance to reconstruct from dictation a 
pattern which was similar technologically, and actually more valuable for purposes 
of comparison than a photograph of the original design. 
Similar needs have led, in other sciences and arts, to the adoption of a simple 
conventional terminology. A botanist, for example, can convey in speech a very 
precise conception of the morphology of a compound leaf, and of its junction with 
the main stem; and heraldry has developed a terminology of the distribution of 
lines, subdivisions, and patterns on the surface of a shield or panel, which enables 
heralds to communicate at a distance almost without the use of diagrams, In 
pure technology the language of sewing and knitting is perhaps the most lucid 
and idiomatic instance. 
The basis of any such system, applicable to the description of abstract designs, 
must be strictly technological ; that is, it must be essentially a description (1) of 
what the artist did; (2) as far as possible, of the order in which he did it, dis- 
tinguishing motif from enhancement or filling ; (3) if necessary, of the effect 
produced by the completed work, in cases where this differs from that of the 
artist’s work while in progress, Z.g.,in figure (a) we have the mot?f of ‘ alternate 
