“A tool is an investment, the interest which it earns depending on the amount of work it turns out in a given time. This depends largely on its convenience of manipulation, involving a study of levers, handles, wheels, knobs and other auxiliary devices, their shape and place with reference to the best adaptation to the average human frame, the ease and extent of their motions, and the rapidity with which these motions may be accomplished. The position of the operator, his natural tendencies, the motions he will go through, all have to be imagined in view of the attainment of his maximum convenience. This study, in the absence of any counterpart of the proposed machine, often forces a resort to rough models, or in lieu of this, a full-size blackboard sketch, extending to the floor, upon which the location of parts may be tried for convenience.” Resources Rich or Meagre as Affecting Invention. In the National Museum, at Washington, the visitor as he inspects examples of American aboriginal art is astonished at its union of utility and beauty. Boat and paddle, spear and hook, basket and vase, are as admirable in form as useful in traveling, fishing, or carrying corn or water. How far an aboriginal designer may go largely turns upon what variety of resources Nature offers him. No few score families on a lonely islet of the Pacific can possibly rival the cloths and carvings displayed by tribes ranging a Pennsylvania, or a California, abounding with diverse minerals, plants and animals. When skill and invention occupy so rich a land they flower into the highest creations of aboriginal art. And yet it may be that the very fewness of a designer’s resources but spurs him to all the more ingenuity. It depends upon who the man is. As we look upon a collection of Eskimo harpoons and knives, coats and kayaks, we marvel that all these should be produced with so much excellence and variety from a scanty store of bones and teeth, sinews and hides, with but little iron or none at all.[10] [10] Two unrivalled books on aboriginal invention have been written by Mr. Otis T. Mason, Curator of the Department of Ethnology at the National Museum, Washington:--“Woman’s Share in Primitive Culture,” New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1894; and “The Origin of Inventions,” London, Walter Scott Publishing Co., and New York, C. Scribner’s Sons, 1905. Both volumes are fully illustrated. The annual reports of the Bureau of Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, describe and illustrate American aboriginal art so fully and admirably as to be indispensable to the student. CHAPTER IX FORM--_Continued_. FORM IN ABORIGINAL ART, AS AFFECTED BY MATERIALS. OLD FORMS PERSIST IN NEW MATERIALS Nature’s gifts first used as given, then modified and copied . . . Rigid materials mean stiff patterns . . . New materials have not yet had their full effect on modern design. Aboriginal Art.