The figures of the gods and the vessels associated with their worship found in the temples and household shrines form by themselves a large division. Here the use of porcelain has from a very early period been encouraged at the expense of bronze and other metals. The ritual vessels used in the imperial worship at Pekin have for ages been made of porcelain. Many of them, as the jars for sacrificial wine, in the form of elephants and rhinoceroses, are copied from the most archaic bronze types; of the same origin is the small libation cup of peculiar shape sometimes seen in our collections. The _Wu-kung_, or five vessels that stand in front of a Buddhist shrine, the incense-burner in the centre, with a candlestick and a vase on either side, are often in China made of porcelain. In Japan these objects are always of metal. A similar set is found in the Taoist temples. The colour of the vessels in ritual use at Pekin varies with the temple in which they are found. Those of the ancestral temple of the emperors are of imperial yellow; those of the altar of heaven of a deep blue (a set of five of this colour, recently brought from Pekin, may be seen at South Kensington). A red glazed ware is connected with the altar of the sun, and white with that of the planet Jupiter. The objects used in the burning of perfume, the basis doubtless of the highly elaborated apparatus of the Japanese, are usually made of porcelain: these are the incense-burner, the boxes for the perfumes, and the little vase to hold the fire-sticks and the tongs. From these we may pass to the various objects found on the table of the cultured classes, most of them connected with literary pursuits. This is an important division in Chinese collections, as we may judge from the often-quoted manuscript catalogue of Dr. Bushell. The slabs, the water-drippers, and a dozen other small objects are modelled in a variety of forms. The pen-rest is generally in the shape of a small range of mountains, the highest in the centre (this, by the way, is the ancient form of the Chinese character for ‘mountain,’ _cf._ PL. VIII.). One of the strangest uses to which porcelain is put by the Chinese is the hat-stand in the form of a hollow sphere supported on a tall, tubular column--the sphere may be filled with either fine charcoal embers or with ice, according to the season. Pillows, too, are made of porcelain--there is one of the _famille verte_ in the Salting collection--but the native collector is warned against those of a certain size and shape, as they may have been stolen from tombs. Tall vases to contain arrows, either cylindrical or square in section, are especially connected with the Manchus. These large vessels may generally be known by their porcelain stands often surrounded by railings.