LIFE-POEM IlSr ART. 



333 



Fig;. 151. Fig-. 152. Fig. 15?. 



5 o =• 



(*) (+) ■ (i) (§) (II) 



Aztec manuscript (Fig. 152) ; and a fifth, upon tlie rocks of ^N^icaragua and South 

 America (Fig. 153). 



It is decided at first sight that these resemblances are nothing but the natural 

 results of simplifying the easily-copied human form — and that rude artists could 

 with difficulty avoid producing figures which would closely resemble one another. 

 Thus the Asiatic, European and American tribes must have produced results such 

 as those represented above. The lamentable instance of the Abbe Domenick, who 

 mistook a German school-boy's copy-book for a collection of pictures by l^Torth 

 American Indians, to say nothing of the more magnificent follies of Brasseur de Bour- 

 bourg, are calculated to warn the student against any attempt at generalization even 

 from genuine material. We, however, doubt whether any other than a South American 

 aborigine could have told what Fig. 148, was intended to represent, much less could we 

 expect an Indian, or a school-boy to draw such a form for man. The very shape of 

 such an outline is proof of its being an ultimate modification from a pre-existing form. 

 Its presence at once suggests experience as a necessity to its existence. jN^o child 

 could possibly conceive of it — and no adult trace it unless he had become acquainted 

 with the traditions and conventionalities of which it is the result. 



Again, such a radical as is seen on a photograph of a rock in the Western 



United States to represent jj^ man, as can be shown in the following sequence 

 (Fig. 154): 



* Report of tlie Indian Tribes of Now Mexico, Lt. A. W. Whipple. From rock at Ojo Pescado. Lt. Whipple 

 in speaking of this says, " tlie figure might he pronounced to be centuries old." 



f Simpson's Report, I. c. pi. 25, fig. 2. See also in this connection a photograph of a rock opposite Parawan, 

 Utah, in series published by U. S. Government (Wheeler's Expedition, 1872). The sign / from Painter Creek, 

 New Mexico, figured by Whipple, loc. cit., has the lower part, recalling the figure from Brazil (see Spix 



and von Martiusj. It is described as being very old and much effaced. May not the transverse lines have been obliter- 

 ated in time ? 



X Kingsborough Coll. (Dresden Codex.) 



§ Troano Manuscript, Paris, 1869, pi. 35. This sign is represented iu the manuscript as inverted. 

 I Squier, Nicaragua and her People, II, pi. 1, 24. 



T[ From original drawings by A. Fendler, in library of Acad, of Natural Sciences of Phila. The rocks are near 

 San Esteban, S. A. (Bee Smithsonian Rep., 1857, 218.) 



A. P. S. — VOL. XV. 3y. 



