Historic styles of ornament remain for us, vast accumulations of tried experiments, for the most part in the character of conventional renderings of natural forms; for however remote from nature some of these may be, they can, as a general rule, be traced back without much difficulty to their natural origin, where in most cases they were used symbolically. Even the most arbitrary forms—for instance, those found in Saracenic ornament—were only developments from natural forms, and the innocent Greek key pattern, that has earned the reputation of being the ornament most unlike anything in nature, is supposed by some to be but a rectilineal development of the rippling waves; and, on the other hand, there is the hypothesis that it is developed from the _fylfot_, a sacred sign that is supposed to symbolize the rotary motion of the planets. There is no ornament more common or so universal in prehistoric, savage, Egyptian, Assyrian and Mediæval decoration than the ubiquitous zigzag, or chevron, and though extremely simple in itself, at least two-thirds of all conventional ornament is based or constructed on its lines: yet this simple ornament has been used as a symbol of totally opposite and different things, by nearly all the various tribes and nations that have used it in decoration. With the Egyptians and Assyrians it has been a symbol of water, with some savage tribes it denotes lightning, with others it does duty for a serpent, with some others it represents a series of bats, birds, and butterflies; as with the original tribes of Brazil, with the magic-loving Semang tribes of East Malacca, it means a frog, and in some instances the branches of trees; and lastly, with the natives of the Hervey Islands, it symbolizes the human figure when placed in duplicate parallel rows. (For a fuller description, and illustrations of this and cognate savage ornament, the reader is referred to Haddon’s “Evolution in Art,” 1895.) We can hardly think of an ornament more simple or more common than the zigzag, and yet how varied in different countries are the sources from which it springs. This may be taken as a warning that it is not safe to accept the same forms as always having the same origin, when we find them in the art of different countries. Apart from the symbolic origin of ornamental forms, students of to-day may learn, from examples of the past, how far they can go, in the converting of natural forms to conventional ornament, without absolutely adapting such examples to their present needs. The past styles in ornament have, in one sense, died out with the nations that created them, and can never be satisfactorily revived, although, as we have often seen, a new style may be built on their foundations. The tendency of to-day is to undervalue the teachings of historic art, and, as a result, we see much work in which both fitness and beauty are conspicuous by their absence.