And in this connection one will also meet with an early manifestation of pictorial art in the form of an extempore design, which serves to bring out more fully and clearly the content of the recital. The transition from a delineative gesture to a contour-design is indeed so direct and easy that it must have taken place even among tribes on a very low plane of culture. In some instances we can distinctly see how the one art grows out of the other. Mr. Mallery has described a dialogue between some Alaskan Indians, in which the left hand is used as an imaginary drawing board upon which lines are drawn with the index finger of the right hand.[193] Herr von Steinen has observed that the natives in Central Brazil, as soon as the gestures prove insufficient for conveying an idea, fashion an explanatory design in the sand.[194] These designs are only a projection on a different surface of the hand-movements with which in their pantomimic language they describe the outlines of the objects in the air. One is tempted, therefore, to find in these transferred gestures the origin of pictorial art. And such an hypothesis seems the more probable as in some tribes—particularly among the North American Indians—the picture-signs for denoting things and phenomena have evidently been derived from the corresponding gesture-signs.[195] But it is, as Professor Groos cautiously remarks, difficult to know whether any primitive man could ever have thought of delineating the contours of an object had he not beforehand possessed some idea of drawing.[196] Without endeavouring to solve this question of origins, it is sufficient for our purpose to state that a kind of extempore design, almost as spontaneous and fugitive as the dramatic art, appears together with the mimic and poetic representations. And we have now only to devote our attention to these various means of information in so far as they may give rise to a manifestation of art, while serving the purely intellectual purpose of conveying or elucidating a thought-content. It is only natural that the requirements of practical life should call into existence various kinds of mimic, pictorial, or literary information which have little whatever to do with art, even if this notion is conceived in its widest sense. There is no reason for us to delay our argument by enumerating pantomimics, gestures, or paintings which aim at communicating notices of trivial importance, such as directions about the way to be taken by travellers, warnings with regard to dangerous passages, etc.[197] Even as a purely technical product a work is of little interest as long as its subject is so poor and insignificant. We feel justified, therefore, in restricting our attention to such manifestations as present in their contents some degree of coherence and continuity.