ARTS AND HANDICRAFTS 327 



antiquity, and a special product of man. The mere working 

 and kneading of earth and clay is, however, no special inven- 

 tion of man's ; long before men made pottery, animals existed 

 which knew how to make dwellings or nests as cradles for their 

 offspring out of damp earth or clay mixed" with saliva. Thus, 

 among insects, certain bees (Chalicodoma muraria) and wasps 

 (Odynerus parietum) ; among birds, the jackdaw (Corvus 

 monedula), woodpeckers (Xenops genibarbis), nuthatch (Sitta 

 caesia), thrushes (Turdi), and certain swallows (Hirundo rustica), 

 and martins and the Australian ariel (Chelidon ariel). All 

 these animals can mould and knead excellently ; they can raise 

 layer on layer, and construct their dwellings with the tools 

 given them by nature in a manner suitable to their require- 

 ments. The manufacture of an earthen vessel by the hand of 

 man was, of course, a greater feat than any of these ; but the 

 fragments of clumsy vessels which are found in the transitional 

 states between the palaeolithic and neolithic, show that in their 

 first beginnings these were of a very primitive kind. How it 

 was that palaeolithic man did not make clay vessels although 

 surrounded by plenty of rich clayey soil, will always remain an 

 anthropological puzzle. We may indeed assume that man first 

 carried his water supply in bone jpans and_ the.- skull-caps of 

 animals, or in vessels of wood and hide which have Jong since 

 perished ; or he may have used vessels of plaited osiers, as do 

 the Terra del Fuegians at the present time. 



Well-made vessels of osier have been thought by some 

 authorities (Ranke and others) to have suggested the making 

 of pottery ; man discovered that vessels, the interior of which 

 had been lined with clay, were much more water-tight. Acci- 

 dentally, one such clay-lined vessel was put on the fire ; the 

 osiers were burnt off, and the first piece of baked pottery was 

 manufactured. 



Potsherds have indeed been discovered on the outer side of 

 which is the impression of basket-work, but the principal ex- 

 amples were carried out on pottery after the properties of clay 

 had become known. Man, most probably, in different parts of 

 the earth, got the idea of making his vessels for fluids and for 

 dry provisions out of this convenient material. A glance at 

 the way in which water will remain all day long in the hoof- 



