recognizable in the later word, so in decorative art the original form
is indistinguishable in the ornament. The migration of races and the
early commercial intercourse between distant lands have done much to
bring about the fusion of types; but again in contrast to this we find,
in the case of extensive tracts of country, notably in the Asiatic
continent, a fixity, throughout centuries, of forms that have once been
introduced, which occasions a confusion between ancient and modern works
of art, and renders investigations much more difficult. An old French
traveler writes: "J'ai vu dans le trésor d'Ispahan les vetements de
Tamerlan; ils ne different en rien de ceux d'aujourd'hui." Ethnology,
the natural sciences, and last, but not least, the history of technical
art are here set face to face with great problems.

[Illustration: FIG. 6.]

In the case in point, the study of the first group of artistic forms that
have been elaborated by Western art leads to definite results, because the
execution of the forms in stone can be followed on monuments that are
relatively not very old, that are dated, and of which the remains are still
extant. In order to follow the development, I ask your permission to go
back at once to the very oldest of the known forms. They come down to us
from the golden era of Greek decorative art--from the fourth or fifth
century B.C.--when the older simple styles of architecture were supplanted
by styles characterized by a greater richness of structure and more
developed ornament. A number of flowers from capitals in Priene, Miletus,
Eleusis, Athens (monument of Lysicrates), and Pergamon; also flowers from
the calathos of a Greek caryatid in the Villa Albani near Rome, upon many
Greek sepulchral wreaths, upon the magnificent gold helmet of a Grecian
warrior (in the Museum of St. Petersburg)--these show us the simplest type
of the pattern in question, a folded leaf, that has been bulged out,