BROWN MAN’S WATER BOTTLE.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 February 1928, Page 18

BROWN MAN’S WATER BOTTLE.

Just an old broken bottle lying on a dust heap. Yet if you think backwards for a moment, that bottle becomes a thing of great importance.

Now there was a time when there were no bottles, and at that time there lived a brown man, somewhere in the plains between China and India. This man had to think of a way of carrying water wherever he went, and, as he had no tools but stones and knew nothing about clay or metal, his problem was what you would call a puzzler.”

And it puzzled him terribly till he saw the wild gourd growing there in the hot sunshine. (A gourd is something like a vegetable marrow with a very hard rind.) The brown man thought hard, then he scooped out all the seeds, filled the gourd with water —■ and made the first bottle.

But it did not satisfy him for long If he rah, the precious water fell out. So he took some grass, and bound it round the - top part of a young gourd which was growing on a stem, and of course the gourd grew where !t was not bound, and remained small where the grass was tied round it. When the man cut it off the plant, he had a bottle with a neck,—and we have never been able to improve on that shape. He also placed stones on the gourd while it was growing, so that it might grow flat; then he could sling it on his back and run very quickly without spilling the water, for a flat bottle does not roll like a round one.

And that is how all bottles, jugs, and vases have come down to us—just from the brown man’s gourd.