[Footnote 17: If geological arguments could be accepted at their face value, a vase found at Chi-ning Chou, in Shantung, would go far to prove the existence of a highly sophisticated glazed pottery at a date not less than 500 years B.C. The find is described and illustrated in the _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, Jahrg. 43, 1911, p. 153, by Herr Ernst Börschmann. The vase, which is 10 cm. high, is of globular form, with a short straight neck and two loop handles. It is of hard buff ware, with a chocolate brown glaze with purplish reflexions of a metallic appearance, and the glaze covers only the upper part of the exterior and ends in an uneven line with drops. One would say Sung or possibly T'ang, and of the type associated with the name Chien yao. This pot was found not in a tomb, but in the undisturbed earth at a depth of seven metres, by a German architect, while sinking a well; and a reasoned case from the stratification of the soil is made out to prove that it must have at least an antiquity of twenty-four hundred years. It is, however, proverbial that geological arguments applied to relatively modern archæology lead to results more startling than correct; and I refuse to accept this solitary specimen as evidence to upset the whole theory of the evolution of Chinese pottery. For it must do nothing less. This piece is of a style which is at present unknown before the T'ang dynasty. It has nothing in common with Han pottery as we know it, still less with Chou, and to accept its Chou date would be to believe that an advanced style of manufacture was in use 500 years B.C., that it was forgotten again for some twelve centuries, and then reappeared in precisely the same form. Fukien white porcelain seals have been found in an Irish bog in positions from which geologists might infer a colossal antiquity, but the history of porcelain has not been disturbed on that account; and I cannot help thinking that this strange phenomenon at Chi-ning Chou must be regarded in much the same light.] [Footnote 18: Berthold Laufer, _Pottery of the Han Dynasty_, Leyden, 1908.] [Footnote 19: Laufer seems to have mistaken it for the beginning of the regular Chinese crackle (see op. cit., p. 8). The Han green glaze contains a large proportion of lead oxide and is coloured with oxide of copper.] [Footnote 20: See Bushell, _Chinese Pottery and Porcelain_, p. 96. "In the tomb of the Empress Tao, consort of Wu Ti (140-85 B.C.) there was found one lac-black earthenware dish."] [Footnote 21: One of these, in the form of a small roller, by which a continuous pattern could be impressed, is figured by Laufer, op. cit. Plate xxxvi.] [Footnote 22: See _Burlington Magazine_, December, 1913, where it is published with a note on the inscription by F.S. Kershaw.] [Footnote 23: _Burial Customs in Szechuan_, Journal of the North-China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xli., 1910, p. 58, etc.]