refrain from quoting it at length. Whilst at Barvas in 1863, he 

 engaged a woman to show him the whole process. He writes : — 



" The clay she used underwent no careful or special pre- 

 paration. She chose the best she could get, and picked out of it 

 the sand and fine gravel which it contained. With her hands 

 alone she gave to the clay its desired shape. She had no aid from 

 anything of the nature of a potter's wheel. In making the smaller 

 ' craggans ' with narrow necks, she used a stick with a curve on 

 it to give form to the inside. All that her fingers could reach was 

 done with them. Having shaped the ' craggan,' she let it stand 

 for a day or two to dry, then took it to the centre of the floor of 

 her hut, filled it with burning peats, and built peats all round it. 

 When sufficiently baked, she withdrew it from the fire, emptied 

 the ashes out, and then poured slowly into it and over it about a 

 pint of milk in order to make it less porous. The ' craggan ' was 

 then ready for use and sale. 



" It is desirable at once to realise, with regard to these 

 ' craggans,' that there is nothing in the way of pottery more rude. 

 They are made of coarse clay containing sand and gravel ; they 

 are not baked in an oven, but in an open fireplace ; they are 

 shaped with the hands without aid from any sort of potter's 

 wheel ; they are unglazed, they are globular and without pedi- 

 ment ; they are nearly always destitute of ornament, and such 

 ornamentation as does occasionally occur on them is composed of 

 straight lines made with a pointed stick or the thumb nail, or with 

 a piece of cord. The rudest pottery ever discovered among the 

 remains of the Stone Age is not ruder than this, and no savages 

 now in the world are known to make pottery of a coarser 

 character." ("The Pdst in the Present," p. 25-28.) 



The other specimen to which I wish to draw your attention, 

 was made in Mendiland, Sierra Leone, and was purchased 

 together with a fine ethnographical collection from this district by 

 the Corporation from Mr. T. J. AUdridge. In writing of his 

 wanderings in the country of the Mendis, Mr. AUdridge states 

 " pottery making is the great industry of the women, and very 

 clever they are at it. With only a lump of clay from a neighbour- 

 ing stream, a board, and a couple of cane modelling sticks, in a 

 few minutes a woman will turn out for you a large and well-formed 

 bowl." (" Wanderings in the Hinterland of Sierra Leone," 

 "Geographical Journal," August, 1894, Vol. 4, No. 2, p. 139.) 

 He does not mention how the pottery is baked. In the paste of 

 this pot a large admixture of mica may be observed. Mr. 

 AUdridge informs me that this was not intentionally introduced, but 

 that mica forms a marked constituent of the greater part of the 

 clays used by the Mendis in making their pots. 



Many other different methods employed by savages in 

 fabricating their hand-made pottery could be quoted ; but the two 

 examples just given are sufficient for my present purpose. Com- 



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