. Diversions of a naturalist . Natural history. 136 DIVERSIONS OF A NATURALIST. Fig. i8.—Leaves from the tree, drawn on a Mykenaean pot which, according to M. Eerrot, are fancifully designed so as to assume step by step (a, b, c) the form of a goose. This ap- pears either to represent the tree which, accord- ing to legend, produced birds as buds on its branches, or to be a fanciful design which gave rise to that legend. The artist's intention of making the leaf gradu- ally pass into the sem- blance of a, goose, is strongly emphasized by the purely fanciful " venation " of the leaf wh
. Diversions of a naturalist . Natural history. 136 DIVERSIONS OF A NATURALIST. Fig. i8.—Leaves from the tree, drawn on a Mykenaean pot which, according to M. Eerrot, are fancifully designed so as to assume step by step (a, b, c) the form of a goose. This ap- pears either to represent the tree which, accord- ing to legend, produced birds as buds on its branches, or to be a fanciful design which gave rise to that legend. The artist's intention of making the leaf gradu- ally pass into the sem- blance of a, goose, is strongly emphasized by the purely fanciful " venation " of the leaf which agrees with the equally fanciful or- nament of the bodies of the geese in Fig. i6, especially the middle one of the series. band along the belly with the band of vertical markings above it agrees closely with the design on the body of the middle goose of the series drawn in Fig. i6. As these are associated in the decoration of the Mykenaean artists, it is fairly evident that the intention has been to mani- pulate the drawing of the leaf or fruit so as to make it resemble the drawing of the goose, whilst that in its turn is modified so as to empha- size or idealize its points of resem- blance to a barnacle. It is true enough that the drawings from Mykenaean pots here submitted cannot be considered as a complete demonstration that the legend of the tree-goose originated with these drawings. But it must be remem- bered that we have only a small number of examples of this pottery surviving from a thousand years It is probable that the fanciful de- corative design of a master artist was copied and used in the painting of hundreds of pots by mere workmen or inferior craftsmen, and that more complete and impressive designs showing the fanciful transformation of leaf or fruit to goose, and of goose to barnacle, existed both before and after the making of the particular pots and jars which have come. Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that ma
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectnaturalhistory, booky
