The favorite conch shell would hold water for him who wished to drink,
but the breaking away of spines and the extraction of the interior whorl
improved it immeasurably. The clumsy mortar of stone, with its thick
walls and great weight, served a useful purpose, but it needed a very
little intelligent thought to show that thin walls and neatly-trimmed
margins were much preferable.

Vessels of clay, aside from the forms imposed upon, them by their
antecedents and associates, would necessarily be subject to changes
suggested by the growing needs of man. These would be worked out with
ever-increasing ease by his unfolding genius for invention. Further
investigation of this phase of development would carry me beyond the
limits set for this paper.

_To please fancy._--The skill acquired by the handling of clay in
constructing vessels and in efforts to increase their usefulness would
open an expansive field for the play of fancy. The potter would no
sooner succeed in copying vessels having life form than he would be
placed in a position to realize his capacity to imitate forms not
peculiar to vessels. His ambition would in time lead him even beyond the
limits of nature and he would invade the realm of imagination, embodying
the conceptions of superstition in the plastic clay. This tendency would
be encouraged and perpetuated by the relegation of vessels of particular
forms to particular ceremonies.

+ORIGIN OF ORNAMENT.+

The birth of the embellishing art must be sought in that stage of animal
development when instinct began to discover that certain attributes or
adornments increased attractiveness. When art in its human sense came
into existence ideas of embellishment soon extended from the _person_,
with, which they had been associated, to all things with which man had
to deal. The processes of the growth of the aesthetic idea are long and
obscure and cannot be taken up in this place.

The various elements of embellishment in which the ceramic art is
interested may be assigned to two great classes, based upon the
character of the conceptions associated with them. These are
_ideographic_ and _non-ideographic_. In the present paper I shall treat
chiefly of the non ideographic, reserving the ideographic for a second
paper.

Elements, non-ideographic from the start, are derived mainly from two
sources: 1st, from objects, natural or artificial, associated with the
arts; and, 2d, from the suggestions of accident