intended for the preservation, and later for the preparation, of food. Even though the art of making pottery is not to be found in primitive culture proper, it nevertheless dates back to a very early age. It is not impossible that this age coincides approximately with the beginning of the totemic period. At any rate, it was totemic cult which, from earliest times on, furnished the motives for the decoration or--as is here also doubtless generally true of the early beginnings--for the magical protection of the vessels, or for the imparting of magical potencies to their contents. Doubtless the clay vessel was originally modelled partly after the natural objects that were used for storing food, and partly after the woven basket. The latter, in turn, may, in its beginnings, have been copied from the bird's nest. When it was discovered, probably accidentally, that clay is hardened by fire, the clay vessel came to be used not merely for the preservation of food but also for its preparation by means of fire. Or, perhaps it would be truer to say that the attempt to accomplish this latter purpose with the unhardened clay vessel led to the art of baking clay. Now, even before the art of making pottery was known, implements, weapons, women's combs, and even the body itself were marked with simple and regular linear drawings to which a magical significance was attached. These geometrical forms, which arose semi-accidentally, were, even from very early times, apperceived as the outlines of animal or plant forms, and it was under the influence of these ideas that they attained a further development. Precisely the same process was repeated in the case of ceramics, only, as it were, upon a broader scale, challenging a richer play of imagination. It is precisely here, however, particularly in the ceramics of the American Indians, that we can trace the ascending and the descending developments of primitive linear drawings, first into completely developed animal designs with meagre suggestions of attempts at plant ornamentation, and then regressively, through a continued conventionalization, into purely geometrical figures. At the same time, it was ceramics, especially, that developed a combination of these two designs, the systematic arrangement of which marks the perfection of this art. Thus arose representations of natural objects framed in by geometrical ornamentations. In this respect also, tattooing furnished a preparation, even though imperfectly, for ceramics. In inner significance, moreover, the latter was a direct outgrowth of the former. By tattooing, man originally guarded his own person with protective magic; in ceramics, this magic was brought into connection with man's utensils, with the food necessary for his life, and with its preparation. In ceramics, therefore, just as in tattooing, the animals represented were at first primarily _totem animals_. Among them we find particularly snakes, fish, and birds, and, in America, the alligator.