We have already spoken of the experiments made by Dr. Dwight in the seventeenth century. Dr. Lister, writing in 1699 (see above, p. 282), shows a remarkable acquaintance with the technical qualities of various kinds of porcelain: he speaks of ‘the inward Substance and Matter of the Pots’ made at Saint-Cloud as the very same as that of the Chinese, ‘hard and fine as Marble, and the self-same grain _on this side vitrification_. Further, the transparency of the Pots the very same.’ He had expected that at best they ‘might have arrived at the Gomron ware, which is indeed little else but a total vitrification.’[206] The man who wrote this must have been thoroughly acquainted with the physical qualities of porcelain; he must already have made some study of the subject. And yet not only at that time, but for the next forty-five years, there is a total absence of any evidence, documentary or practical, that porcelain was made anywhere in England.[207] Meantime new porcelain works were springing up in various parts of Germany, and in France the factories of Saint-Cloud and Chantilly had long been at work. It is indeed from a French document that we get our first hint as to the existence of porcelain works in England before the year 1745. In an ‘_arrest du Conseil d’État du Roy_’ of that year, by which Charles Adam is authorised to establish a porcelain factory at Vincennes, a note of alarm is sounded. ‘A new establishment that has lately been founded in England for the manufacture of porcelain, which appears by the nature of its composition more beautiful than that of Saxony,’ will probably, so the document states, lead to the new English ware replacing that of French origin (Marryat, p. 371). For one reason or another there appears to have been a great outburst of interest in porcelain about the year 1745. The works at Bow were probably started at that time. There are in existence dated pieces of that year which were almost certainly made at Chelsea, and these were no first efforts. As early as this, some porcelain figures may possibly have been made at Derby,[208] so that we may perhaps take the ten years preceding 1750 as the period during which the industry was obscurely passing through its experimental stage. After this time, those who had been first in the field reaped a good harvest, for during the next decade the china mania was at its height, and afforded much material for the satirical and comic writers of the day. To sum up the history of English porcelain in the eighteenth century, we may take it that about the year 1740 the first attempts were made to imitate the various kinds of Oriental and Continental porcelain that were every year coming more and more into use; that by the year 1750 several factories were at work; and finally, that by 1780 the best had already been accomplished, and the decline had already begun.