with brown slip and marked with the square seal of Ko Ming-hsiang. Many of these "Fat-shan Chün" wares are exceedingly attractive, but by far the most beautiful are the rare dishes in which the glaze has been allowed to form in deep pools of glass in the centre.[390] In these pieces all the changing tints of the surrounding glaze are concentrated in the cavity in a crystalline mass of vivid colour. Such wares are, I think, not older than the Ch´ing dynasty, though they have been erroneously described by some writers as Sung.[391] With regard to the dates of the Fat-shan Chün types, the remarks made on the Canton stoneware apply equally to them. Many are frankly modern; the finer pieces may be assigned to the eighteenth century, and a few perhaps go back to the Ming dynasty. From the current name we infer that they are made at Fat-shan, but this is the only evidence existing on the question. Fat-shan is situated a few miles south-west of Canton with which it is connected by railway. It is a large town, "renowned for its vast silk manufactures, cloth-making, embroidery, cutlery, matting, paper, and porcelain."[392] No doubt the word porcelain in this context is a comprehensive term, and includes stoneware and pottery, if, indeed, it means anything else. But the precise provenance of the various kinds of Kuang yao is far from clear. All that we learn from the _T´ao lu_ is that the Kuang yao originated at Yang-chiang. Probably the type of mottled glaze which characterises the Canton stoneware was first made there, and was afterwards adopted in the factories which sprang up in the neighbourhood of Canton. Other localities in the province of Kuangtung in which the ceramic industry is represented include Chao-Ch´ing Fu,[393] which may be only a trading centre for the wares; Shih-wan, in Po-lo Hsien, a few miles east of Canton, which is said[394] to supply the Canton markets with "pots, dishes, and jars of every needed shape and size, some of the latter as large as hogsheads, glazed and unglazed, together with a large variety of imitation grotto work and figures for gardens, gallipots, little images, etc."; and the prefecture of Lien-chou, in the extreme south of the province, which exports its wares from Pak-hoi. A few specimens bought in the neighbourhood of the Shih-wan potteries, and no doubt of local make, are in the British Museum. They consist of lion joss-stick holders, crab-shaped pots for growing lily bulbs, and small figures of a hard, rough stoneware of buff or drab colour. The bulb pots have an opaque green glaze with passages of transparent _flambé_ colours, not unlike the Yi-hsing or Canton Chün glazes, and the other pieces have washes of the thin, translucent green, turquoise, yellow, and purplish brown glazes which are usually applied on the biscuit of pottery or porcelain. The exhibits at the Paris Exhibition[395] in 1878 included "tea jars, tobacco pots, medicine jars, cassolettes, various pots, plates,