e on sculptured stones, and in the keeping of
the ghosts that haunt ancient grave-steads. But when two pieces of
artistic work, one civilised, one savage, resemble each other, it is
always dangerous to suppose that the resemblance bears witness to
relationship or contact between the races, or to influences imported by
one from the other. New Zealand work may be Asiatic in origin, and
debased by the effect of centuries of lower civilisation and ruder
implements. Or Asiatic ornament may be a form of art improved out of
ruder forms, like those to which the New Zealanders have already
attained. One is sometimes almost tempted to regard the favourite Maori
spiral as an imitation of the form, not unlike that of a bishop's crozier
at the top, taken by the great native ferns. Examples of resemblance, to
be accounted for by the development of a crude early idea, may be traced
most easily in the early pottery of Greece. No one says that the Greeks
borrowed from the civilised people of America. Only a few enthusiasts
say that the civilised peoples of America, especially the Peruvians, are
Aryan by race. Yet the remains of Peruvian palaces are often by no means
dissimilar in style from the 'Pelasgic' and 'Cyclopean' buildings of
gigantic stones which remain on such ancient Hellenic sites as Argos and
Mycenae. The probability is that men living in similar social
conditions, and using similar implements, have unconsciously and
unintentionally arrived at like results.

[Fig 5. a, A Maori Design; b, Tattoo on a Maori's face: 285.jpg]

Few people who are interested in the question can afford to visit Peru
and Mycenae and study the architecture for themselves. But anyone who is
interested in the strange identity of the human mind everywhere, and in
the necessary forms of early art, can go to the British Museum and
examine the American and early Greek pottery. Compare the Greek key
pattern and the wave pattern on Greek and Mexican vases, and compare the
bird-faces, or human faces very like those of birds, with the similar
faces on the clay pots which Dr. Schliemann dug up at Troy. The latter
are engraved in his book on Troy. Compare the so-called 'cuttle-fish'
from a Peruvian jar with the same figure on the early Greek vases, most
of which are to be found in the last of the classical vase-rooms
upstairs. Once more, compare the little clay 'whorls' of the Mexican and
Peruvian room with those which Dr. Schliemann found so num