Pictorial

A metaphor is a pictorial expression.

Not until after they had passed beyond the best work of the First Men in science and philosophy did the Second Men discover the remains of the great stone library in Siberia. A party of engineers happened upon it while they were preparing to sink a shaft for subterranean energy. The tablets were broken, disordered, weathered. Little by little, however, they were reconstructed and interpreted, with the aid of the pictorial dictionary. The finds were of extreme interest to the Second Men, but not in the manner which the Siberian party had intended, not as a store of scientific and philosophic truth, but as a vivid historical document. The view of the universe which the tablets recorded was both too naïve and too artificial; but the insight which they afforded into the mind of the earlier species was invaluable. So little of the old world had survived the volcanic epoch that the Second Men had failed hitherto to get a clear picture of their predecessors.

A hand-made pictorial Cambodian silk ikat that uses all-natural silk and dyes takes nearly a year to produce and can sell for thousands of dollars. But this traditional handicraft, which is being preserved by fewer than a dozen small nonprofits in the country, is at risk of disappearing.

We had our class pictorial.

Evidently ventilation was not one of the many popular specialities of Alexander the Great's establishment, for the atmosphere of the restaurant was heavy with the fumes of yesterday's food, the pictorial advertisements of which were being now expunged from the blackboard.

Drawings and pictures are more than mere ornaments in scientific discourse. Blackboard sketches, geological maps, diagrams of molecular structure, astronomical photographs, MRI images, the many varieties of statistical charts and graphs: These pictorial devices are indispensable tools for presenting evidence, for explaining a theory, for telling a story.

Sunday Pictorial

The budding starlet is featured in a pictorial in a glossy magazine next week.

beautiful Pictorials, topicals, commemoratives, airmails. Introductory selection 40% discount. Ralph Rice, 15 Longlane, West Hartford 7, Conn.