In these shawl-patterns the original simple form meets us in a highly developed, magnificent, and splendidly colored differentiation and elaboration.  This we can have no scruples in ranking along with the mediaeval plane-patterns, which we have referred to above, among the highest achievements of decorative art.

[Illustration:  FIG. 19.]

It is evident that it, at any rate in this high stage of development, resisted fusion with Western forms of art.  It is all the more incumbent upon us to investigate the laws of its existence, in order to make it less alien to us, or perhaps to assimilate it to ourselves by attaining to an understanding of those laws.  A great step has been made when criticism has, by a more painstaking study, put itself into a position to characterize as worthless ignorantly imitated, or even original, miscreations such as are eternally cropping up.  If we look at our modern manufactures immediately after studying patterns which enchant us with their classical repose, or after it such others as captivate the eye by their beautiful coloring, or 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 Schoeneberg, 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 Araceae 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 Araceae 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 Araceae upon the general appearance of the vegetation, both in the full and enormous development of species of Caladia and in the species of Pothos which form such impenetrable mazes of interlooping stems.