For pot-pourri and for fragrant flowers to perfume the rooms various covered jars were provided, hanging vases with reticulated sides (Plate 114), and boxes with perforated covers. For growing plants there were deep flower pots and shallow bulb bowls, and the large and small fish bowls were used for growing water-lilies as well as for keeping gold-fish; and shallow bowls were apparently used as arenas for fighting crickets.[489] As for the vessels in which the crickets were kept, various suggestions have been made in reference to the “cricket pots” mentioned in Chinese books, and the name is sometimes given to reticulated vases and boxes; but we are told that the cricket prefers a damp dwelling, and that their pots were consequently made as a rule of absorbent earthenware. There is a snuff bottle decorated with crickets in the British Museum, and one is represented perched on an overturned pot from which he has apparently escaped, the lid having fallen off. This pot is of ordinary ovoid jar form apparently ornamented with incised fret pattern. The apparatus of the library table is peculiarly Chinese; and as calligraphy and painting were regarded as among the highest accomplishments, so the potter lavished on the implements of the writer his most ingenious fancies and his most beautiful workmanship. There were porcelain handles for the pencil brush called _pi kuan_; a brush rest (_pi ko_) of many fanciful forms (see Fig. 3 of Plate 60) of which a miniature range of hills was the commonest; a bed (_pi ch’uang_) for it to lie down on, and a cylindrical jar (_pi t’ung_) for it to stand up in; vessels called _hsi_ to wash it in, usually of shallow bowl form or shaped like crinkled lotus leaves or in some such dainty design. There were rests for the writer’s wrist and paper weights of fantastic form. For the ink (_mo_), there is the pallet (_mo yen_) for rubbing (Plate 94, Fig. 2), and a bed for the ink-cake (_mo ch’uang_), a screen (_yen p’ing_) behind which it was rubbed, small water pots (_shui ch’êng_) in innumerable shapes and served by a tiny ladle, and water droppers (_shui ti_) of quaint and ingenious designs.[490] There were rollers for picture scrolls (_hua chou_) with porcelain ends, and stands for books in the form of small elegantly shaped tables with three or four legs often beautifully painted in enamels on the biscuit.