[Illustration: Fig. 285. Series of twelve conventional devices from the decorated zone of a vase.] In our study of the forms and meanings of these devices it should not be forgotten that collateral branches of art are also simultaneously employing the same motives and reducing them through other similar classes of conventionalizing forces to corresponding forms. Recording arts--pictography, hieroglyphic and phonetic writing--carry life forms through all degrees of abbreviation and change, and all ceremonial and all domestic arts with which such forms are associated do the same; and it is not impossible that many conventional forms found upon pottery are borrowed outright from the other arts. It will be impossible to detect these borrowed elements unless very literally transferred from some art the style of which is well known. It would be comparatively easy to identify literal borrowings from phonetic art or even from hieroglyphic art, as the form and arrangement of the devices are quite unlike those observed in pure decoration. We do not know that Chiriquian culture had achieved a hieroglyphic or a phonetic system of writing, but it is worth while to call attention to the form and the manner of employment of some of the devices found upon the pottery. In Fig. 284 I present an outline drawing of a vase, the shoulder of which is encircled by a broad zone of decoration. This zone is divided into panels by oblique lines. A row of rectangular compartments extends along the middle of the band and rows of triangular spaces occur at the sides. Each space is occupied by a device having one or more features suggesting a pictorial original and doubtless derived from one. In the main row there are twelve figures, no two of which are identical. Although we are unable to show that any of these characters had other than a purely decorative use, we see how richly the ancient peoples were supplied, through the conventionalizing agencies of the art, with devices that could have been employed as ideograms and letters where such were needed, and devices, too, that, from their derivation and use in the art, must in most cases have had ideas associated with them. RÉSUMÉ.