Vessels to hold water would be an early requirement of the human race. The shells of some vegetable productions, as those of gourds and the larger kinds of nuts, would readily occur to the mind as adapted to this purpose. The skins of animals taken in the chase would form another resource. The bowls and dishes of the common Arabs are, and have been, made of wood; but, for their production, some tools must be possessed, as well as some dexterity in their use. It is a singular practice of some tribes to cast stones made hot into the fluids contained in wooden bowls, in order to raise their temperature; but the discovery that certain substances could be made to resist the action of fire would at once cause them to have the preference. Who made the discovery—the brickmaker or the potter—we have no means of knowing. The art of the potter was especially necessary at an early period, from the scarcity of fuel in some parts of the East. Hence we are told of people “who make in their tents a hole about a foot and a half deep, wherein they put their earthen pipkins or pots, with the meat within, closed up, so that they are in the turf above the middle. Three-fourth parts thereof they lay about with stones, and the fourth part of which is left open, through which they throw in their dried dung, which burns immediately, and gives so great a heat, that the pot groweth so hot as if it had stood in the middle of a lighted coal-heap; so that they boil their meat with a little fire, quicker than we do ours with a great one on our hearths.” As the Israelites must have had as much occasion to be sparing of their fuel as any people, and especially while journeying in the wilderness, it has been supposed that they must have had some such practice. It is certain that we read in the Levitical law of “ranges of pots,” thus showing their use at that period. It became still more familiar in after times. “I went down,” says the Prophet Jeremiah, “to the potter’s house, and behold he wrought a work on the wheels.” The name of the inventor of this simple, yet effective machine, has been lost for ages, if indeed it was ever made known. It consists merely of two wheels or round plates placed horizontally, to which a rotary motion is given. If, then, on the upper one be heaped a mass of clay, it is evident that a tendency to a centrifugal motion will be given to it, which will greatly facilitate the action of the potter’s fingers, in forming out of the rude lump whatever vessel he pleases. With his thumbs separated from the fingers, and held on the clay as it revolves, the rapid motion will enable him readily to mould a hollow vessel.