It is true that the first trace of the application of oxide of tin to produce a white opaque glazed surface is to be met with upon Babylonian or Assyrian bricks, but we are disposed to think that it was then merely used as a pigment to produce a white colour, and not as an application to pottery for the production of a white opaque glaze capable of receiving coloured enrichment by painting in other pigments. A corroboration of this opinion would seem to exist in the fact that throughout Asia Minor, Syria, Persia, and Egypt, a purely stanniferous glaze on pottery has never been generally adopted, or taken the place of that simple and beautiful siliceous coating, so dexterously applied and with such richness of effect upon the Persian and Damascus earthenware. Engraved is an example of an early Damascus plate (no. 6590), at South [Illustration] Kensington. Perhaps isolated and lying dormant in remote localities for centuries, its use may have been learned by the Arabs, for its next appearance is upon fragments of tiling apparently of their manufacture or fashioned under their influence. How the knowledge of this enamel travelled, when and where it was first used, and to what extent applied, is still doubtful. We meet with an occasional fragment generally upon mural decoration of uncertain date on various Arab sites, till at length it becomes palpably appreciable in the Moorish potteries of Spain and of the Balearic islands. The baron J. Ch. Davillier, in his excellent work on pottery, states that he has not been able to discover any piece which could reasonably be ascribed to a date anterior to the fourteenth century, some two hundred years after the expulsion of the Saracens from Spain. In Valencia, however, anterior to its conquest by Jayme I. of Arragon in 1239, potteries had been long established, and were of such importance that that monarch felt himself bound to protect the Moorish potters of Xativa (San Filippo) by a special edict. We must bear in mind that there were two periods of Mahommedan sway in Spain, the first on the expulsion of the Gothic monarchy by the Arabs and the establishment of the Caliphate at Cordova, in the eighth century. Of the ceramic productions of this early period we have no accurate knowledge, but we should expect to find them of similar character to the siliceous glazed wares prevalent in the east. The second period is after an interval of five centuries, in 1235, when the Moors founded the kingdom of Granada, having driven out the Arabs. Then first appear the wares usually known as Hispano-moresque, like the fine vase (engraved) no. 8968, at South Kensington; for we find the tiles of the Alhambra dating about 1300, the Alhambra vase about 1320, and continuous abundant examples of tin glazed wares of Moorish origin, until the period of the conquest of the country by Ferdinand and Isabella; after which the pottery becomes more purely Spanish and speedily declines.