long periods of time.  In point of fact, the simpler forms are invariably characterized by a nearer and nearer approach to the more ancient patterns and also to the natural flower-forms of the Araceae.  We find the spathe, again, sometimes drawn like an acanthus leaf, more often, however, bulged out, coming to be more and more of a mere outline figure, and becoming converted into a sort of background; then the spadix, generally conical in shape, sometimes, however, altogether replaced by a perfect thistle, at other times again by a pomegranate.  Auberville, in his magnificent work “L’Ornement des Tissus,” is astonished to find the term pomegranate-pattern almost confined to these forms, since their central part is generally formed of a thistle-form.  As far as I can discover in the literature that is at my disposal, this question has not had any particular attention devoted to it except in the large work upon Ottoman architecture published in Constantinople under the patronage of Edhem Pasha.  The pomegranate that has served as the original of the pattern in question is in this work surrounded with leaves till it gives some sort of an approach to the pattern. (There are important suggestions in the book as to the employment of melon-forms.) Whoever has picked the fruit from the tender twigs of the pomegranate tree, which are close set with small altered leaves, will never dream of attributing the derivation of the thorny leaves that appear in the pattern to pomegranate leaves at any stage of their development.

[Illustration:  FIG. 14]

It does not require much penetration to see that the outline of the whole form corresponds to the spathe of the Araceae, even although in later times the jagged contour is all that has remained of it, and it appears to have been provided with ornamental forms quite independently of the rest of the pattern.  The inner thistle-form cannot be derived from the common thistle, because the surrounding leaves negative any such idea.  The artichoke theory also has not enough in its favor, although the artichoke, as well as the thistle, was probably at a later time directly pressed into service.  Prof.  Ascherson first called my attention to the extremely anciently cultivated plant, the safflor (Carthamus tinctoris, Fig. 15), a thistle plant whose flowers were employed by the ancients as a dye.  Some drawings and dried specimens, as well as the literature of the subject, first gave me a hope to find that this plant was the archetype of this ornament, a hope that was borne out by the study of the actual plant, although I was unable to grow it to any great perfection.

In the days of the Egyptian King Sargo (according to Ascherson and Schweinfurth) this plant was already well known as a plant of cultivation; in a wild state it is not known (De Candolle, “Originel des Plantes cultivees").  In Asia its cultivation stretches to Japan.  Semper cites a passage from an Indian drama to the effect that over the doorway there was stretched an arch of ivory, and about it were bannerets on which wild safran (Saflor) was painted.