The vermilion which was removed from the porcelain plates is of a blood-red colour and crystalline structure. This is then powdered up in a mortar and removed to the levigating mills. These are the ordinary little horizontal stone mills used by Chinese and other natives of the East to grind rice and other grain into flour or pulp, as the case may be. Each stone is about 2½ feet in diameter; the lower stone is stationary, the upper is turned by a direct-acting piece of wood having a hole in it which works a wooden peg affixed to the upper stone, which is made to revolve by a backward and forward movement of the piece of wood, or handle, some 3 or 4 feet long, previously mentioned. One man turns each mill. The upper stone has a small hole in it near its centre, down which the workman from time to time pours a little spoonful of the powdered vermilion, which he washes down into the mill with water; as he turns the mill, the workman keeps continually ladling little spoonfuls of water down the aperture or hole in the upper stone; the ground and thus elutriated vermilion, as it escapes from between the stones, is washed down by the water into a vessel placed beneath to receive it. When work is suspended for the evening, the ground vermilion is carefully stirred up with a solution of glue and alum in water, in the proportion of about an ounce of each to the gallon. The glue has been made to mix with the water by previously heating it with a small quantity of water; the earthen pots in which this process is effected each hold about 6 gallons. The mixture is then left to settle. In the following morning the mixture of glue and alum is poured off the vermilion, and the upper portion of the cake of vermilion at the bottom of the vessel--that is, the portion which remained longest suspended in the liquid--will be found to be in a much finer state of subdivision than the lower portion, which requires to be again elutriated as on the previous day: this separation of the more finely divided vermilion from that which was coarser, by suspension in a dense medium, is a really most ingenious process, for which we should give the Chinaman every credit. The process of grinding, elutriation, and separation of the coarsely ground from the fine vermilion, sometimes requires to be several times repeated, in order to fully bring out the colour. As a final process the damp cake of finely ground vermilion is stirred up with clean water, and allowed to settle down until the next morning, when the water is carefully poured off into large wooden vats to still further deposit a small quantity of vermilion yet remaining in suspension, and the vermilion is dried in the open air on the roof of the premises.