It is interesting to note the various shapes of china and the names of the pieces that were imported in colonial and Revolutionary times, as well as the variety of wares. In the _Boston News Letter_ of 1742 I find “china boats for spoons.” In the _Boston Evening Post_ in 1749, “china mugs, pitchers, and Turk caps,” which latter mysterious articles were, I am sure, china also. What are “Mint Stands in delph,” or rather what were they in 1751? In 1753 they had “custard-dishes” for sale; and did they have “terines” or “terreens” before 1760? I do not find them named at an earlier date. A year later came “sallade bowls” and the first “china handle coffee-cups,” though John Jekyll had had handles on his cups in 1732. Not until 1772 do I find “Enamel’d Tea cups & Saucers, with handles to the cups.” In 1763 china patch-boxes and china sweetmeat boxes came to New England. China stoves were advertised, but I think they were rare. “China tumblers, with covers,” seem strange to us. What were the “yellow klinckers and Red glaz’d pantils” advertised in the _South Carolina State Gazette_ in 1787? China “sweetmeat and pickle saucers” came in 1773, and “half pint blue & white enameled Basons with Sawsers.” China milk-jugs, milk-pots, milk-cups, milk-ewers, and creamers, all antedated the milk-pitcher. We had sugar-boxes, sugar-basons, sugar-pots, and sugar-dishes before we had sugar-bowls. “Twifflers” were of porcelain also—pudding-dishes we call them now. “China voiders” also are advertised for sale. These colonial ceramic articles of nomenclature most unpleasing in sound to modern ears, were really only an ancient type of what are known to dealers nowadays as “crumb-trays.” Into a voider fragments of food remaining on the table—bones and the like—were gathered after a meal by a voiding-knife. Pewter voiders abounded, and “china baskets and voiders” appear in newspaper lists in 1740. Doubtless many of these voiders and Turk caps, twifflers, and mint stands have descended to us, but are known now by the uniform and uninteresting name of dishes. IV. EARLY FICTILE ART IN AMERICA In all our wanderings and searchings we have never found any specimens of old American china, for one author says that, like the snakes in Iceland, there are none. The history of the early manufacture of porcelain in this country is so meagre that it is quickly written, and records of early pottery works are not plentiful, and specimens are comparatively unobtainable, and frequently far from beautiful or instructive. Still I believe that America deserves a fuller ceramic history, and has had a larger manufacture of pottery and porcelain than is generally known.