The result is that where we have no actual specimens to help us, there is unlimited scope for conflicting theories on the meaning of the original text. However, as our collections grow and guiding specimens arrive, more of the Chinese descriptions are explained, and working back from the known to the unknown we are able to penetrate farther into the obscurities of the subject. To take a single instance. The well-known celadon ware, with strongly built greyish white body, and beautiful smooth, translucent sea-green glaze, has been identified beyond all doubt with the Lung-ch´üan ware of Chinese books. When we read of the green porcelain (_ch´ing tz´ŭ_) bowls with fishes in relief inside or on the bottom, our thoughts at once turn with confidence to such specimens as Fig. 3, Plate 21, and we realise that for once we are certain of the meaning of the elusive colour word _ch´ing_. In the same way other phrases here and there can be run to earth; and when we meet the same descriptive words in other contexts, the key to their meaning is already in our hands. In this way no little profit can even now be got from the study of Chinese works, and it tends to increase steadily, though, of course, one living example is more instructive than a host of descriptions. The Sung wares are true children of the potter's craft, made as they are by the simplest processes, and in the main decorated only by genuine potter methods. The adventitious aid of the painter's brush was, it is true, invoked in a few cases, but even then the pigments used were almost entirely of an earthy nature, and it is very doubtful if painting in enamels had yet been thought of. Two years ago enamel-painting on Sung porcelain would have been denied in the most uncompromising terms. But the claims of certain specimens of the Tz´ŭ Chou type, with brick-red and leaf-green enamel on the glaze, to belong to the Sung period have been so persistently urged that they cannot be entirely ignored. At present I am unconvinced of their Sung origin; but our knowledge of T´ang wares has developed with such surprising rapidity that we must be prepared for similar surprises in connection with the Sung. Meanwhile it would be well to suspend judgment on this interesting point.