animal selects its favorite foods from among the products that
throughout its history constitute its sustenance and shape its
appetites.

* * * * *

Now, as primitive peoples advance from savagery to barbarism there
comes a time in the history of all kinds of textile products at which
the natural technical progress of decorative elaboration is interfered
with by forces from without the art. This occurs when ideas, symbolic
or otherwise, come to be associated with the purely geometric figures,
tending to arrest or modify their development, or, again, it occurs
when the artist seeks to substitute mythologic subjects for the
geometric units. This period cannot be always well defined, as the
first steps in this direction are so thoroughly subordinated to the
textile forces. Between what may be regarded as purely technical,
geometric ornament and ornament recognizably delineative, we find in
each group of advanced textile products a series of forms of mixed or
uncertain pedigree. These must receive slight attention here.

[Illustration: FIG. 325. Coiled basket ornamented with devices
probably very highly conventionalized mythological subjects. Obtained
from the Apache--1/8.]

Fig. 325 represents a large and handsome basket obtained from the
Apache. It will be seen that the outline of the figures comprising the
principal zone of ornament departs somewhat from the four ruling
directions of the textile combination. This was accomplished by
increasing the width of the steps in the outline as the dark rays
progressed, resulting in curved outlines of eccentric character. This