their whole time in breaking their household ware. Now not only are the primitive needs of man much the same throughout the world and at all periods of time, the nature of man is much the same also; and a distinguishing feature in his nature is love of variety. The same variety which we see in the forms of life and in the outward appearance and mental aptitudes of man himself is reflected in the products of his skill. Yet along with this love of variety goes a strong conservative or imitative instinct--an instinct which finds, too, its counterpart in nature, “so careful of the type.” On the one hand, fashions change; on the other, a fashion once introduced spreads rapidly and maintains itself to the exclusion of all others for a determinate period of time throughout a determinate area. And to nothing does this apply with more truth than to pottery. Observation has shown that not only are different tribes or countries distinguished by a difference in their pottery, but that in each tribe or country similar differences distinguish successive periods of time. When to this is added the practical indestructibility of the potsherd, it will easily be seen what a criterion is afforded by it for fixing the age and character of ancient remains, and their relation to other monuments of the past. It is not surprising that a study of pottery has become the sheet-anchor of archæological chronology, and that the first object of the scientific excavator is to determine the relative succession of the ceramic remains he discovers and their connection with similar remains found elsewhere. Scientific excavation means, before all things else, careful observation and record of every piece of pottery, however apparently worthless, which the excavator disinters.