"Potsherds," says another authority, "to the ethnologist are not 

 less valuable than the characteristic fossils by which the geologist 

 determines the ages of the relative underlying strata." 



Trivial as potsherds may seem, they are milestones, which mark 

 the progress of civilisation. Vast must be the gap, and vast is the 

 gap in point of culture between the maker of these rude cinerary 

 urns and the maker of a piece of majolica ware. And yet the one 

 is the parent of the other. And the rude marks on these urns are 

 the first dawn of our highest art. And if potsherds are the milestones 

 of civilisation, yet the art of pottery has contributed much to help 

 civilisation. In the struggle for existence which goes on in the 

 animal world, the outcome is that the strong are selected for 

 survival ; the weak die out. This is the law of natural selection ; 

 and man is subject to that law, like all other animals. But with 

 that law of nature man in society continues to wage a successful 

 warfare ; animals do not. The outcome of that war — a war waged 

 with nature to prevent her putting into execution in the case of 

 man her law of natural selection — is civilisation. And one great 

 way in which man defeats that law and keeps alive the asthmatic, 

 the bronchial, the rheumatic, the gouty, and the other pets of the 

 doctors, is by the art of cookery ; and I think that I have shown 

 you that without pots cookery would be at a very low ebb, and 

 that those who had indifferent pots had but indifferent cheer. 

 Thus the potter's art not only marks the progress of civilisation, 

 but is one of its most valuable allies. 



