the elaborative working out of their details, we recognize that the
beautifully balanced form is often cut up, choked over with others, or
mangled (the flower springing up side down from the leaves), the whole
being traversed at random by spirals, which are utterly foreign to the
spirit of such a style, and all this at the caprice of uncultured, boorish
designers. Once we see that the original of the form was a plant, we shall
ever in the developed, artistic form cling, in a general way at least, to
the laws of its organization, and we shall at any rate be in a position to
avoid violent incongruities.

[Illustration: FIG. 20.]

I had resort, a few years ago, to the young botanist Ruhmer, assistant at
the Botanical Museum at Schöneberg, who has unfortunately since died of
some chest-disease, in order to get some sort of a groundwork for direct
investigations. I asked him to look up the literature of the subject, with
respect to the employment of the Indian Araceæ for domestic uses or in
medicine. A detailed work on the subject was produced, and establishes
that, quite irrespective of species of Alocasia and Colocasia that have
been referred to, a large number of Araceæ were employed for all sorts of
domestic purposes. Scindapsus, which was used as a medicine, has actually
retained a Sanskrit name, "vustiva." I cannot here go further into the
details of this investigation, but must remark that even the incomplete and
imperfect drawings of these plants, which, owing to the difficulty of
preserving them, are so difficult to collect through travelers, exhibit
such a wealth of shape, that it is quite natural that Indian and Persian
flower-loving artists should be quite taken with them, and employ them
enthusiastically in decorative art. Let me also mention that Haeckel, in
his '"Letters of an Indian Traveler," very often bears witness to the
effect of the Araceæ upon the general appearance of the vegetation, both in