ication of
the multitude of relics, and to the discovery of a method of procedure
suited to a broad and exhaustive treatment of the ceramic art.

I do not expect to discuss ethnical questions, although ceramic
studies will eventually be of assistance in determining the
distribution and migrations of peoples, and in fixing the chronology
of very remote events in the history of pottery-making races.

Some of the results of my studies of the evolutionary phase of the
subject are embodied in an accompanying paper upon the "Origin and
Development of Form and Ornament," and a second paper will soon
follow. Before the final work is issued I hope to make close studies
of all the principal collections, public and private. In such a work
the importance of great numbers of examples cannot be overestimated.
Facts can be learned from a few specimens, but relationships and
principles can only be derived from the study of multitudes.

I shall probably have occasion to modify many of the views advanced in
these preliminary papers, but it is only by pushing out such advance
guards that the final goal can be reached.

Since the original issue of this paper in the Proceedings of the
Davenport Academy of Sciences, a careful revision of the text has been
made and much additional matter and a number of illustrations have
been added.

I wish in this place to express my obligations to the officers and
members of the Davenport Academy of Sciences, and especially to Mrs.
M. L. D. Putnam and Prof. W. H. Pratt, whose generous aid has been of
the greatest service to me.

CERAMIC GROUPS.

In studying the collections from the Mississippi Valley, I find it
convenient to classify the ceramic products in three great groups,
which belong to as many pretty well-defined districts; these I have
named, for convenience of treatment, the Upper Mississippi, the
Middle Mississippi, and the Lower Mississippi or Gulf provinces. Other
pottery occurs within the limits of these areas, but the examples
found in the museums are so few that very little of importance can be
learned from them.

The three groups enumerated are not equally represented. The great
body of our collections is from the middle province. The ware of
the Lower Mississippi or Gulf district, of which we have but a small
number of pieces, has many features in common with the pottery of the
middle district, and at the same time is identical in most respects
with that of the Gulf coast to t