Although no trace of Scandinavian influence can be detected in the ornamental patterns of the Anglo-Saxons—at all events, in the period preceding the Viking conquests in the ninth and tenth centuries—I am not quite so sure that one of the elements of early Christian decorative art in Great Britain may not possibly be of Northern origin, namely, the zoömorphic element. I put forward this suggestion with the greatest diffidence, and merely as a tentative theory until something better can be found to take its place. Zoömorphism is not a marked characteristic of Pagan Saxon decorative art, and therefore, in order to account for the predominance of so-called dragonesque designs in the early Irish illuminated MSS., we must fall back on one of the following alternatives: (1) that these patterns are of native origin, and were invented by the Irish; (2) that like the spirals, they are of Late-Celtic origin; and (3) that they are of Italo-Byzantine derivation. General Pitt-Rivers and Mr. Henry Balfour have given us an insight of the manner in which animal forms, by repeated copying, may degenerate into mere ornament; and at one time I thought that early Christian zoömorphism might have been the result of a process of a reverse nature. It is possible to “see snakes” when looking at a piece of interlaced-work without necessarily suffering from excess of alcoholism. Thus zoömorphic designs might have been evolved from interlaced-work by making the bands terminate in heads and tails, the limbs following in due course later on. Such may have been the process by which the Irish illuminator arrived at his zoömorphism, unless it can be shown that he got it in some other way. Animal forms are comparatively rare in Late-Celtic art, and they are not interlaced, so that it is almost useless to seek for the original inspiring idea in this direction. Birds, beasts, reptiles, and other creatures—often used symbolically—are frequently seen in Byzantine art, both in the decorative features of churches and in the borders of the MSS. If it was thence that the early Christian zoömorphs in this country took their origin, I fancy the interlacements must have been arrived at either by placing the creatures in pairs symmetrically facing each other, or by contorting their bodies into unnatural attitudes. In the case of beasts arranged in pairs, the first step towards interlacement is to raise their paws and then to make them cross. The beasts may also be placed with their necks crossed; their tails may gradually curl round until they pass over the body, and may be looped or knotted to fill in a blank space; and in endless other ways the most complicated forms of zoömorphic interlaced-work may be evolved from simple beginnings.