include the various shades of red derived from copper, of the _grand feu_. The _rouge soufflé_ is explained below. The word ‘miniature’ is used, I think, in the old sense of an illuminated manuscript. ‘Finally there are kinds of porcelain with the landscapes on them painted with a mixture of nearly every colour, heightened by a brilliant gilding. These are very beautiful, if no expense is spared. Otherwise the ordinary porcelain of this kind is not to be compared with that which is painted with azure alone. The _Annals of King-te-chen_ say that formerly the people used nothing but a white ware.’ The source of the cobalt blue is now discussed and its mode of preparation. The raw material is thrown into the bed of the furnace and there roasted for twenty-four hours. It is then reduced to an impalpable powder in a mortar of biscuit porcelain. The red is made by roasting copperas to a high temperature in a crucible. The white that is used as an enamel in decorating porcelain is prepared from ‘_un caillou transparent_,’ which is also roasted on the floor of the furnace.[79] This _caillou_ is mixed with two parts of white lead, and this mixture forms a flux--the basis for the colours. There then follows some account of the other colours used, but here it is difficult to follow the good father. He makes some strange statements, which are not all of them cleared up in his supplementary letter of 1722. There are indeed so many amplifications and corrections in the latter that it will be well to combine in our summary the gleanings from the two sources. This second letter is dated from King-te-chen after an interval of ten years, and shows a greater acquaintance with practical details. Passing over the account of the _flambé_ and of some other glazes--to avoid repetition we will defer our remarks till we come to speak of these wares in the next chapter--we hear in the second letter of a valuable material lately discovered which may take the place of kaolin in the composition of the paste. This is described as a chalky-looking body which is largely used by Chinese doctors as a medicine and is called _Hua-shi_. We will here interrupt the Père D’Entrecolles’s account to mention that the _hua-shi_ is strictly speaking soapstone or steatite, a silicate of magnesia. But whether magnesia ever enters into the paste or glaze of Chinese porcelain is as yet a disputed question.[80] As far as I know, it has never been found by analysis. The Chinese nomenclature of rocks is necessarily based on their physical aspect alone. Some specimens sent from King-te-chen, which were described on the labels as _hua-shi_, were found at Sèvres to consist of an impure kaolin containing a large quantity of mica.