WOMAN AS AN INVENTOR AND MANUFACTURER. 99 



settle. " Though the term ' specific gravity ' was unknown to her, 

 she seems to have seized upon this principle in order to gather 

 out the elements desired. This fine paste will not make pottery ; 

 it will crack badly in drying and baking. But our ceramic worker 

 is equal to the occasion, and long ago had discovered, as every 

 archaeologist knows, that sand or some other tempering material 

 must be added. The oldest fragments yet discovered reveal in 

 their texture grains of sand, put there by Nature or by the potter, 

 bits of pulverized shells, or the remains of old pots ground fine 

 and worked over into new vessels." She sorts material for coarser 

 and for finer ware, turns it with her hand, guided by her eye, 

 molds it around or within some object to give it shape, using 

 gourds, nets, or baskets for the purpose, whose forms and pecul- 



iar markings are thus preserved, and arrives at the 



stage of 



Fro. 9. Eskimo Mothers. (After Healy.) 



making pottery like basketry, for which she rolls out a slender 

 cylinder of prepared paste, and builds her vessel by coiling this 

 cylinder around the form. The evolution of form in this Pueblo 

 ware, by which a flat disk becomes a bowl, and from that are de- 

 rived various forms of bottles and vases, has been well studied by 

 Mr. Frank Cushing. 



" From woman's back to the car and the stately ship " is the 



