EARTHEN POT OF THE STONE AGE. 
347 
edge of Maquapit Lake, at a time in the summer when the waters 
of the lake were unusually low, and so exposed portions of the 
flats on the S. W. shore of that lake which usually are under 
water. Along this side of the lake are remains of an abandoned 
portion of the thoroughfare from French Lake, now partly 
silted up. This thoroughfare now goes directly out into Maqua- 
pit Lake, west of the old deserted channel. The subsidence of 
the earth’s crust in this part of the valley of the St. John river 
would have allowed this to occur, by the depression of the portion 
of the intervale which once protected this abandoned channel 
from the surf of the lakes. 
It is quite possible that the subsidence of this area by bringing 
the spot where the pot was found, beneath the ordinary lake 
level at the present day, may have been the means of preserving 
it from the destruction by frost which has overtaken other 
vessels that have been exposed to its action, when lost in the 
water or abandoned at higher levels along the lake shores, and 
thoroughfares. 
The form of the pot donated by Mr. London is not without 
special significance. Heretofore, from the fragments preserved 
we have thought the bottoms of pots of people of the Stone Age 
in this region were round ; such a form would have a special 
advantage where the vessel was not used to set on a flat surface, 
but to be held in a bed in the ashes, or the loose earthen floor 
of a hut bottom. But in Mr. London’s pot there is a departure 
from this ideal, in that the form of the bottom is that of a rounded 
cone; this conical shape would have an advantage, where the 
bottom of the pot was set in the ashes of the fire ; it would rise 
the body of the pot higher than if the bottom were round, and 
so bringing its sides more completely under the action of the fire. 
That the pot was not raised entirely above the fire, as the 
ordinary iron pot now in use is, seems clear from the fact that 
the surface coating of clay at and near the bottom, is not burned 
off, as it is higher up on the slope of the pot. 
The outward slope of the pot rises to about the middle, whence 
it curves gradually inward, so that the upper third of the pot has 
a smaller diameter than the middle ; and above this constricted 
