We now come to the most important departure from the Chinese procedure. In Japan, the ware (as is, indeed, universally the case in Europe) receives a preliminary baking in a specially constructed biscuit kiln before the application of the glaze. The adoption of this practice would seem to point to a greater tenderness in the raw clay. The glaze (Japanese _kusuri_--‘medicine‘) is prepared by mixing the finely powdered china-stone with the ashes of certain kinds of wood. The ashes from the bark of the usu-tree (_Distylium racemosum_) are especially in request for this purpose, and it is certainly remarkable that these ashes contain nearly 40 per cent. of lime, the element that is conspicuous by its absence from the paste. The furnaces in which the principal firing takes place are of a bee-hive shape: they are arranged in rows of from five to ten hearths placed by preference on the slope of a hill, so that each succeeding hearth rises two or three feet above its neighbour. This plan is probably a modification of the old Ming type of furnace, and the system, it is said, was introduced from Korea. The use of seggars appears never to have become general, and this is probably the reason why the marks of ‘crow’s-feet’ and other kinds of struts, used to support the vessel in the kiln, are often conspicuous on the base of the larger pieces. Neither in their glazes nor for their enamels have the Japanese ever made use of any colours unknown to the Chinese, nor until quite recent times have they paid much attention to single glazes. There is, however, one important exception to this last statement, in the _Sei-ji_ or celadon ware, which with them has always been the ideal of classical perfection, and which they have imitated with varied success. For their reds they have always been confined to pigments derived from iron, but with these opaque intractable materials they have obtained a great variety of effects, especially by means of delicate gradations of strength. In the case of the blue under the glaze, the Japanese have never attained to the mastery of their teachers: there is very commonly a tendency of the colour to run, and a bluish tint is thereby given to the white ground; the blue, moreover, on the older specimens, is generally dull, and in modern times often crude and unpleasant.