In such cases as afford us an opportunity of studying more primitive though not equally ancient stages of culture, as for instance among the Greeks, we find the above dictum confirmed, at any rate in cases where we have to deal with the representation of the indigenous flora as contradistinguished from such representations of plants as were imported from foreign civilizations.  In the case that is now to occupy us, we have not to go back so very far in the history of the world.

[Illustration:  FIG. 4.]

The ornamental representations of plants are of two kinds.  Where we have to deal with a simple pictorial reproduction of plants as symbols (laurel branches, boughs of olive and fir, and branches of ivy), i. e., with a mere characteristic decoration of a technical structure, stress is laid upon the most faithful reproduction of the object possible—­the artist is again and again referred to the study of Nature in order to imitate her.  Hence, as a general rule, there is less difficulty in the explanation of these forms, because even the minute details of the natural object now and then offer points that one can fasten upon.  It is quite another thing when we have to deal with actual decoration which does not aim at anything further than at employing the structural laws of organisms in order to organize the unwieldy substance, to endow the stone with a higher vitality.  These latter forms depart, even at the time when they originate, very considerably from the natural objects.  The successors of the originators soon still further modify them by adapting them to particular purposes, combining and fusing them with other forms so as to produce particular individual forms which have each their own history (e.g., the acanthus ornament, which, in its developed form, differs very greatly from the acanthus plant itself); and in a wider sense we may here enumerate all such forms as have been raised by art to the dignity of perfectly viable beings, e.g., griffins, sphinxes, dragons, and angels.

[Illustration:  Fig. 5.]

The deciphering and derivation of such forms as these is naturally enough more difficult; in the case of most of them we are not even in possession of the most necessary preliminaries to the investigation, and in the case of others there are very important links missing (e.g., for the well-known Greek palmettas).  In proportion as the representation of the plant was a secondary object, the travesty has been more and more complete.  As in the case of language, where the root is hardly 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 tresor 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.