House and Garden 
quite equal to the average product of the white 
man’s kilns. We had one serving on our porch as 
a jardiniere, containing a flower pot in which a 
small araucaria was growing. A high wind blew 
jar, pot and shrub to the ground in the midst of a 
rockery, shattering the pot into a hundred pieces 
and laying bare the plant’s roots; but the jar that 
held them suffered no damage except a slight crack 
at the rim where it had struck a stone. 
Few of the traders to whom the Indians sell their 
pottery, have taste to discriminate between good work 
and bad, and the rule with them seems to be to pay 
according to size, not excellence; while the price paid 
is so little as to discourage good workmanship. As 
a result much of the ware brought to the trading 
post nowadays is carelessly done, and the younger 
women—in whom the hope of the perpetuation of 
the art rests—are not troubling themselves to learn 
so unremunerative a craft. We have known fifteen 
or twenty cents to be paid by traders for work that 
dealers in the cities would think cheap at two or 
three dollars. Our own experience has been that 
from seventy-five cents to a dollar for a jar holding 
a couple of gallons is an encouraging return to 
the potter, and proportionately less for pieces re¬ 
quiring less labor. 
The transportation of the fragile ware to one’s 
far-off home is, of course, the main difficulty to the 
first hand collector of Indian pottery, and adds 
materially to the original cost. Shipping by freight 
in quantities large enough to fill a barrel or large 
crate is the most economical way, and if the packing 
is done in hay there is no need for the breaking of a 
single piece though the breadth of the continent is to 
be crossed. We found the expense of carriage of 
twenty moderate-sized pieces from a New Mexico 
pueblo to our own door in Philadelphia, was approxi¬ 
mately the same as the first cost to us at the pueblo. 
That is the collection which cost us, say, ten dollars 
in the Indian country stood us twenty dollars in our 
rooms at home. Only collectors can know the 
serenity that filled our being as we fished the last 
piece from out its straw nest and saw the whole cher¬ 
ished collection, uncracked, marshalled before us—a 
collection which after supplying the needs of our own 
home, left us with many pieces that made unique 
and useful gifts at Christmas and Easter. 
The extinction of so beautiful a native art as 
Pueblo pottery would be a disgrace to our National 
taste. Scientists are filling museums with it; why 
should not the layman who has a feeling for beauty 
in his daily life, add to his own enjoyment and the 
encouragement of his red brethren by putting it in 
his living-room ? It is not yet too late to save the 
industry, for there are a number of good potters still 
living; but they are generally old women, and unless 
they are quickly given practical encouragement to 
continue the making and to teach their daughters 
the secrets of the art, another generation will know 
it only as something that has been. 
Soil for Potting Plants 
T he gardener has more trouble in securing or 
in ascertaining what is a proper soil for use 
in potting plants than in any other phase of 
garden work. The general process is to dig some 
“ dirt” from the yard, fill the pot, and set the plant 
in. The natural result follows—a plant without life. 
A thrifty plant—a thing of beauty—can be had for 
the same expenditure of effort; only there must be 
the application of a little knowledge of plant life. 
Instead of setting the plant filled with “dirt” 
which crusts and runs together after every wetting, 
either from artificial application or rain fall, try the 
use of charcoal and vegetable mold, or charcoal, 
vegetable mold and sand. Fill the pot with a mix¬ 
ture of charcoal and vegetable mold, half-and-half, 
or else fill it with a mixture of charcoal, mold and 
sand, one-third each. 
If plants are potted using either of these soil com¬ 
binations, the results will be most gratifying, and, to 
those who have been accustomed to try to grow them 
in the usual way, will be even startling. A vigorous 
growth of the stem will be obtained, there will be a 
noticeable richness in the color of the leaves, and an 
added beauty to the flowers, if a flowering plant. 
The properties of the charcoal act medicinally on 
the plants—restores unhealthy plants when fed to the 
roots on the same principle as it aids the human sys¬ 
tem when taken internally. Then again it supplies 
a constant source of carbonic gas during a slow pro¬ 
cess of natural decomposition, thus yielding contin¬ 
uously an essential element of plant food. 
While the best results are to be obtained by the 
use of charcoal, yet plants can be successfully grown 
when potted in equal quantities of sand and vegeta¬ 
ble mold. Where charcoal is used the best is that 
powdered from pine coal, the kind that the country 
blacksmith uses in his forge, and that is better if it 
has been exposed to the air for six months or longer 
before being used. Whether the charcoal and vegeta¬ 
ble mold mixture, or that of charcoal, sand and mold 
is used, the gardener must bear in mind that the air 
is given direct access to the roots of the plants and 
consequently they are dried very rapidly, necessitat¬ 
ing frequent and copious watering. Do not permit 
the plants to suffer for lack of water; the results will 
amply repay careful attention. There is nothing 
prettier than vigorous, well-developed, and well- 
cared-for potted plants. J. W. H. 
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