The green celadon was highly valued in India and Persia, where it was reputed to have the power of disclosing the presence of poison. An early reference to the Chinese porcelain occurs in the writings of the Persian geographer Yacut,[181] who mentions "four boxes full of Chinese porcelain and rock crystal" among the effects of a native of Dour-er-Raçibi in Khouzistan, who died in 913 a.d. The trade with Egypt is indicated in the much-quoted incident of the gift of forty pieces of Chinese porcelain sent from Egypt by Saladin to Nur-ed-din in Damascus in 1171, and by the later gift of porcelain vases sent in 1487 by the Sultan of Egypt to Lorenzo de' Medici. A large proportion of the celadons in our collections has been brought and still comes from India, Persia, and Egypt.[182] The Sultan's treasure at Constantinople[183] teems with celadons collected in mediæval times. Fragments of celadon are unearthed on almost every important mediæval site which is excavated in the East. The British Museum has small collections of such fragments from Bijapur in India, the island of Kais in the Persian Gulf, Rhages in Persia, Ephesus, Rhodes, Cairo, and Mombasa, to mention a few sites only. Fragments of celadon were found, in company with Chinese coins ranging in date from 990-1111 A.D., by Sir John Kirk and Lieut. C. Smith, near Kilwa in Zanzibar, and the former, while British representative in Zanzibar, was able to form a considerable collection of complete specimens which were treasured by the natives with almost religious care. A story told by Sir John Kirk illustrates the attitude of the native mind towards these treasured wares. A celadon dish with particularly fine carving was the subject of a family dispute, and to satisfy the rival claims a local Solomon decided that it should be divided between the disputants. One large fragment of it is now in Sir John Kirk's collection, which includes many interesting dishes, crackled and plain, and ranging in colour from dark olive green to the pale watery tint of the Sawankalok[184] wares. Other specimens of interest are the large, wide-mouthed, bowl-shaped vases with sides deeply ribbed or carved in high relief with bold floral designs. They have the peculiar feature of being constructed at first without a bottom, which was separately made in the form of a saucer and dropped in, the glaze holding it firmly in position. Similar vases[185] have been found in India and elsewhere. One of the first pieces of celadon to arrive in this country was the celebrated Warham bowl, which was bequeathed to New College, Oxford, in 1530 by Archbishop Warham. It is of dull grey green celadon, the outside faintly engraved with four lotus petals, each containing a trefoil, and in the bottom inside is the character _ch´ing_ [Chinese] (pure) surrounded by rays. It has a fine silver-gilt mount of English make.[186] It would be possible to multiply references to the traffic in