In their admiration of antiques the Chinese yield to none, and nowhere have private collections been more jealously guarded and more difficult of access. Even in the sixteenth century relatively large sums were paid for Sung porcelains, and £30 was not too much for a "chicken wine cup" barely a hundred years old. The ownership of a choice antique--say, of the Sung dynasty--made the possessor a man of mark; perhaps even a marked man if the local ruler chanced to be of a grasping nature. A story is told on p. 75 of this volume of a Ko ware incense burner (afterwards sold for 200 ounces of gold), which brought a man to imprisonment and torture in the early Ming period; and, if the newspaper account was correct, there was an incident in the recent revolution which should touch the collector's heart. A prominent general, who, like so many Chinese grandees, was an ardent collector, was expecting a choice piece of porcelain from Shanghai. In due course the box arrived and was taken to the general's sanctum. He proceeded to open it, no doubt with all the eagerness and suppressed excitement which collectors feel in such tense moments, only to be blown to pieces by a bomb! His enemies had known too well the weak point in his defence. Collecting is a less dangerous sport in England; but if it were not so, the ardent collector would be in no way deterred. Warnings are wasted on him, and he would follow his quarry, even though the path were strewn with fragments of his indiscreet fellows. Still less is he discouraged by difficulties of another kind, as illustrated 'by the story[2] of T´ang's white Sung tripod, which was so closely imitated that its owner, one of the most celebrated collectors of the sixteenth century, could not distinguish the copy from the original. An eighteenth century Chinese writer points the moral of the story: "When connoisseurs point with admiration to a vessel, calling it Ting ware, or, again, Kuan ware, how can we know that it is not a 'false tripod' which deceives them?" The force of this question will be appreciated by collectors of Sung wares, especially of the white Ting porcelains and the green celadons; for there is nothing more difficult to classify correctly than these long-lived types. There are, however, authentic Sung examples within reach, and we can train our eyes with these, so that nothing but the very best imitations will deceive us; and, after all, if we succeed in obtaining a really first-rate Ming copy of a Sung type we shall be fortunate, for if we ever discover the truth--which is an unlikely contingency--we may console ourselves with thoughts of the enthusiast who eventually bought T´ang's false tripod for £300 and "went home perfectly happy."