Not but that some attempts may have already been made to apply coloured decoration over the glaze--the next and final step in the history of porcelain. There are some passages in contemporary Chinese books, giving descriptions of elaborate subjects painted in many colours on porcelain of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which it would be difficult to apply to our class of painted glazes. Thus--to take a pronounced instance from an unexceptionable source--the miniature wine-cups, No. 59 of the Bushell manuscript, are attributed by Tzu-ching to the reign of Cheng-hua (1464-87), and he describes them thus--‘They are painted in enamel colours’ (so Dr. Bushell translates the original) ‘with flowers and insects; ... the cockscomb, the narcissus and other flowers, the flying dragon-fly and crawling mantis are minutely painted after life in green, yellow, and crimson enamel.’ (This, by the way, is a combination of colours which it must have been difficult to apply at one firing with the pigments known at that time.) And yet in the absence of any specimen of enamelled ware (using the word enamel in its restricted sense for a decoration applied over the glaze) that can with certainty be attributed to so early a period, it will be safer to postpone the date of the introduction of this decoration, _sur couverte_, for another hundred years. It will be remembered that the distinctive feature of this decoration with enamels is the use of an easily fusible silicate, containing much lead--in fact a kind of flint glass. A glass of this description is capable of being stained by the addition of small quantities of certain metallic oxides, some of which would not stand the heat requisite for the firing of the porcelain. This, in fact, is the application to porcelain of the arts of the glass-stainer and of the enameller, arts already at this time fully developed in the West. For once the Chinese authorities all agree in finding in an exotic and indeed Western art the origin of their enamelled porcelain. When, however, we attempt to interpret their statements we are landed in an even more than customary chaos--so many are the different readings for the names of foreign countries and for technical processes. Let us then consider for a moment what the materials were that the Chinese had to draw from--whether from Arab or other sources. Putting aside the application of stained glass to windows, for specimens of this art are not easily exported, these may be summed up as, first, the enamelled glass of the Saracens, and secondly, the _cloisonnés_ and _champlevés_ enamels of the Byzantines and other Western nations.