If this be admitted, it must be supposed that Japan began by imitating some of the choicest works of China, and those presenting the greatest difficulty to a beginner not perfectly sure of his practice. The necessary result of this, so far as M. Jacquemart is concerned, would be to transfer what he calls artistic porcelain to China. In any event, it is clear that all representatives of that family which can be ascribed to a date earlier than the latter part of the sixteenth or the beginning of the seventeenth century are Chinese. Many years must have elapsed before the Japanese could, with Shonsui’s assistance, attain to such perfection in working a new material that their ware could be mistaken for that of their teachers. The difficulties of collectors are thus restricted to pieces which are comparatively modern. Nothing is more natural than that, when the manufacture was temporarily paralyzed in China by the disturbances attending the change from the Ming to the Tartar dynasty, for several years prior to 1662 the Japanese should have bestirred themselves to supply the demand created by the regular trade in China. It is of this period, and down to the beginning of the eighteenth century, that the missionaries write when they speak of the demand for Japanese porcelain. It must have been early in the eighteenth century, also, that the imperial present of Japanese porcelain was sent to Russia. Japanese art was rising as that of China declined; and so far from suggesting the Rose decoration to China, the Japanese Rose was merely striving to take its place, when the original was passing away. The Japanese found the Chinese patronage valuable, and therefore they tried to please their customers by perpetuating the styles of decoration with which they were familiar. Their imitative skill makes the task of distinguishing the two fabrics one of considerable difficulty, even with the limitations in point of time to which we have alluded. The distinctive characteristics of Japanese porcelain will be referred to in their proper place under Japan; but, in the mean time, it is evident that many of the supposed Japanese pieces, with domestic scenes, or with fan-shaped reservations in wide borders of geometrical patterns, and containing brilliantly feathered birds, are Chinese.