EARTHENWARE POT OF THE STONE AGE. 
349 
regular, as we would expect them to be, if a potter’s wheel had 
been used in forming the pot; but in some places the finger 
streaks are deeper, and in others less marked. 
The outer surface of the pot, where not worn or cut by the 
fire, is remarkably smooth, much more so than the inside. It 
evidently had a luting of fine mud or clay spread over the whole 
outer surface, and upon this sensitive coating the pattern was 
laid. How the very smooth surface was given to this luting of 
clay we can only conjecture; but we may surmise that a brush 
of fine fur would serve as a tool for this purpose. 
For about 3^2 inches from the apex the surface of the pot 
is perfectly smooth; this is the part that would be buried in the 
ashes when the pot was in use. 
The pattern (which we may call rush pattern) on the 
lower part of the pot, above the smooth surfaces, consists of 
faintly impressed longitudinal grooves, radiating from the bottom 
up the slope of the vessel. We conjecture that this pattern 
may have been impressed in the following way : To support the 
pot at a level, where the potter could work at it conveniently and 
without detriment to the smooth surface, the vessel may have 
been held in a hoop, supported at the sides on stakes ; if this hoop 
had a lining of rushes held in place at the top by another hoop 
(making a double hoop), and these rushes were tied together at 
the bottom, they would form a bag or cavity in which the pot 
could be placed preparatory to using the tool by which the chief 
pattern made on the surface of the pot was given. The weight 
of the pot itself was sufficient to cause the faint longitudinal 
grooves which we find near its lower part. This part of the pot 
was about three inches wide. 
Above the Rush pattern we come to the part where the potter 
applied herself seriously to the decoration of the surface. From 
here up to the lip of the pot, we find the ornamentation made with 
one and the same tool, and a similar tool has been used in the 
decoration of the other fragments of pottery of the Stone Age 
found in New Brunswick.* The pattern on this pot is such a 
one as might have been made by a row of four or five projections 
* See Bulletin Nat. Hist. Soc. of N. B. No. Ill, p. 17. 
