1 6 Bulletin of the Natural History Society . 
A was a pottery-yard, or place of deposit, where the occupants 
of this hut kept a supply of clay for the manufacture of pots and 
earthen vessels. These people had ready to their hand, in the 
flat of land which they had chosen as a site for their village, a 
good tough clay, well suited for making pottery, when mixed 
with a due proportion of sand. Nevertheless, they do not appear 
in any case to have used it, but took the mud of the sea-shore, 
near low-tide mark, for the manufacture of their ware. Such I 
infer to have been the case, for in the course of our excavations 
we came across patches of pottery clay in various spots, and at 
several levels in the hut bottoms A, B and C, and kitchen-middens 
adjoining them, and in all cases the material thus used was beach - 
mud, mingled with numerous shells of mussel and clam. In pre- 
paring this mud for use, these women of the Stone Age picked out 
the coarser stones and gravel and many of the shells before mould- 
ing and baking their pots. But in consequence of the imperfections 
of the material used as the basis of their pottery, and the very 
imperfect firing to which the ware was subjected, it was exceed- 
ingly fragile. The coarseness of the clay used in the manufacture, 
as well as these defects in the material, and the imperfect baking, 
compelled these potters to make their ware quite thick, in order 
to' obtain the necessary strength. Their vessels were seldom less 
than three-eighths of an inch thick in any part, except near the 
rim, and the bottoms were usually about half an inch thick. As 
I have already remarked, the women appear to have been slovenly 
in their housekeeping, and as an added instance of this trait I may 
mention that the charred remains of their pottage still cling to 
the fragments of their vessels. In the fine charcoal and ashes 
around the fire-place of hut bottom A were found numbers of 
parched peas, and of a round seed of the size of those of the 
radish, as well as grains apparently of some kind of grass. The 
peas were about the size and appearance of Beach Peas ( Lathy rus 
maritimus , Big.), a plant which now grows plentifully at high-water 
mark on the beach in front of the village site. 
But while animadverting upon their carelessness in some 
respects, it is only just to give them credit for a considerable 
amount of rude taste in the ornamentation of their pottery. Upon 
the fragments found at the three hut bottoms we examined there 
are no less than ten distinct designs or patterns impressed upon 
